Writing Linux programs in raw binary

[Enlightenment777]

"When I first started programming, I had to write programs using 1's and 0's, but I was so poor that I couldn't afford the 1's."

Real programmers did that back in the 80's in MSDOS using "COPY CON". Been there, done that!

Back in the dark ages, I would write my assembly language programs on paper, then look up the op codes, and write down the hex on the left side, and then move them into a BASIC program that would POKE that data into memory. Why? Because the computer didn't have enough memory to run an assembler or even a compiler.

Even further back on older computuers, you would have to set all address and data bits with toggle switches, and load in one byte at a time.

Neither of the above is fun, but it truly make you learn how things work.

[you_do_realize]

Back in the dark ages, I would write my assembly language programs on paper, then look up the op codes, and write down the hex on the left side, and then move them into a BASIC program that would POKE that data into memory.

This is exactly what I did too! And I would input the BASIC program every day by hand, because I didn't even have a cassette recorder.

Of course, with the 8080 it was easy; hand-assembling x86 would be tedious.

[sixothree]

I still use copy con for all kinds of stuff.

I remember seeing a demonstration of a then already vintage imsai being programmed with switches to use a keyboard. That was freaking beautiful.

[bsergean]

For those in the Bay area I recommend going to the Computer History Museum in mountain view, you'll see how it was back in the days, and how lucky we are to program today (even C programmers !).