From Newsgroup: comp.sys.cbm
"Randy McLaughlin" <
randy@nospam.com> wrote in news:l%jMa.156$
AK1.109@fe04.atl2.webusenet.com:
You are putting a definition on a computer program that does not
exist. When you write a basic program on a commie it is not directly executed, it is just a "data file" to the interpreter yet it is a
computer program. Remember that a computer program is a program that
runs on a computer and a program is "a sequence of coded instructions
that can be inserted into a mechanism (as a computer)" (quoted from www.webster.com). This may include, but not limited to the machine
language of the target computer. The coded instructions may be
tokens, ascii strings, or whatever as long as it it a sequence of instructions.
I am not exactly putting a definition on a computer program. A computer program is a sequence of instructions that is processed. The fact is that
any program must be processed down into machine language in order for the
CPU to execute the task. So if it was written in high-level then it needs
to come to the lowest level before it can be executed. In order for a
text file to be directly executed without a "compiler" or "interpreter".
It essentially has to be an ML program in the first place. A text editor
can in theory write an ML program. If you know Assembly and how to read
an ML monitor then you care carefully associate letters/characters with
the correct CHR$ value to equal the decimal value of the opcode which is
in hexadecimal. One can convert Decimal to Hexadecimal. Just a little of
math. If you want to Load the Accumalator then you must associate it with
a memory address or a value to the Opcode. I have done some ML in the
past. In Assembly, LDA can be converted to several types of LDA opcodes
and that is what the Hexadecimal codes are as shown earlier. LDA can be
in several forms and uses and when an Assembly language file is saved (um Assembled), the end result is an ML executable. Just make sure the file
name is correct and the file-type is correct when saving. In Windows,
that would be an .EXE type file. In CBM, there is no .(extension). Just
make sure its a PRG file according to CBM DOS. Otherwise, you would have
to use a command like: LOAD"filename,s,r",8,1 (8 = device number, 1 =
Drive number). Then type RUN.
I am still familiar with the basics of it.
Now, next time - read a little more carefully to what I wrote. It is very
fine to consider source code (As in C/C++ and the actual BASIC text or
its Tokenized File) a program but it can not be executed until it is at machine level. Machine Language files are directly executable.
In reality, a machine language is technically the only computer
"programming" language but from a very technical point but it doesn't
matter. Since programs are what is executed by a processor. As it is the
only language that creates lists of instructions that can be executed by
a CPU. But only until they created high-level languages that takes text
to represent whole series of routines in ML and develop a conversion
process where keywords (as in BASIC,C/C++ and any other forms of high-
level languages) and convert them into ML instructions. I am talking
Machine Language. Now, this quickly made the statement that ML is the
only way obsolete because high-level languages made it easier for us to instruct a computer in a more human-like form. Since we do not talk in hexadecimal or 0s and 1s. We talk in words so we developed a process or several processes to be exact to take text (words) and convert them down
to words that computers can understand and that is series of 0s & 1s. A
word for an 8 bit is often 8 bit wide. Now this became the beginning of high-level programming. Finally a new way to program computers in an
indirect way. Since if you wanted to directly program computers (well in
the most direct way), you would use Machine Language.
Now, lovely it is now to talk directly to a Pentium 4. Just imagine how
lovely it is to talk to one of those chips in machine language.
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