It was a cool episode, but I really think they should give them the cutie marks already. I generally dislike the status quo is god trope. I really don't think the show would suffer if they averted that trope. On the contrary.
Btw, I get the impression that some people are confusing "asm" with something like "the internal representation of values/data structures in memory" and/or how the data in data containers is placed in memory.
The bit representation of data, and how a program allocates and uses memory, is not the same thing as "asm".
"Asm" is, generally, a programming language that maps directly keywords to corresponding opcodes in the machine code of the target CPU. (An opcode is the sequence of bits that the CPU interprets as one of the commands that it executes when running a program.)
Knowing how data is represented in memory can be useful at some level, but knowing machine code, much less an "asm" language used to represent it, has nothing to do with this.
I am saying that you should know how data is represented, how control logic works underneath the hood, etc.
In the majority of programming tasks knowing that is not very useful. At most you need to know if there are some limits in the representation of values (such as integers in C/C++, which are limited to 32 or 64 bits, which means that there are minimum and maximum values that can be represented with them.) However, you don't really need to know anything about asm in order to know what the limits of an integer (or any such primitive type) may be in a given language.
(Even knowing the bit pattern, ie. the internal representation of a value, such as typically 2's complement for integers in most architectures, is something that one doesn't need to know, unless one is making really low-level optimizations for something. And in the vast majority of cases you don't to do such optimizations (even if you think you do). There may be other situations where it might be useful information, but it's not all that common.)
I think that having an understanding of assembly is complementary with data structures and algorithms.
I don't see how. I most certainly don't need to know how the machine code generated from using, for example, a std::list looks like in order to fully understand how it works, what it does, what's useful and not useful for, how efficient it is, and how it compares to other data containers. I can perfectly well understand pointers (and even understand that in C++ they are more or less directly memory addresses) and how objects are allocated, without knowing anything about asm.
I'm not saying "don't learn asm". I'm just saying that if you think you will become a better programmer by learning asm, you are mistaken, especially if you are still learning to program. (In fact, it could actually be the opposite. You might start thinking too "low-level" about things and perform micro-optimizations that are actually more detrimental than beneficial. If for nothing else, then with respect to the readability of your code. In some cases even with respect to its speed.)
EEssentia wrote:
Knowing assembly or even cache is pretty pointless if you all you do is code in C#, Java, etc.
If you learn C++, then knowing how cache works (at the very least, what stuff wreaks havoc with caches and what does not) can be a significant advantage.
Cache optimization can in fact be useful also in C# and Java.
Certain programs can indeed become much faster if you change the order in which you handle the data. (In general, the rule of thumb is that you should do as much as possible with smallish chunks of data, rather than doing things to very large amounts of it over and over.) Of course this is a relatively advanced topic, hardly something a beginner programmer should worry too much about.
I think this run is suboptimal. My extensive research of this game suggests that it can actually be completed by collecting just 70 stars, so this run collects 50 too many.
Regardless, it looks well done, so I'm voting yes.
Finally, at least understanding how an assembly language relates to C is imperative. Assembly language is the closest thing to what computers see that humans can read, so realizing how these three levels translate will make you a better programmer.
Will people please stop making that suggestion already? Just stop it.
Studying asm to become a better programmer is like studying a ready-made meal under a microscope to become a better cook.
A lot, lot more imperative to become a good programmer is to understand how algorithms and data containers work, what their efficiency is, what different algorithms and containers are good for and bad for, and so on. Computational complexity and memory usage of these things are significantly more important to know than how the compiler translates it to machine code (if it translates it at all; not all languages are compiled, and even those that are might not be compiled directly to machine code.)
There are many other things as well which are much more important to a programmer than knowing asm. For example program design, including things like proper object-oriented design.
Maybe, maybe, when you become fluent with algorithms, data containers and other programming techniques, then it might be interesting to know what they translate to under the hood. Regardless, knowing that won't make you a better programmer, except in quite exceptional cases. (Mostly if you intend to program, for example, to really low-level embedded systems such as a PIC controller.)
I have to wonder if the thread wasn't originally about musical instrument playing skills, rather than talent at composing music... (Because in the latter case I would have quite a bunch of songs I could post.)
Am I simply remembering wrong, or are the ponies acting in a significantly more anthropomorphic manner in this season than they did in the first season?
When you reach the PlayStation we're talking ~4 megabytes of data.
So because the state of the PlayStation takes 4 megabytes, it's impossible to make a fast savestate routine for a NES emulator?
creaothceann wrote:
Internal status (maybe a few KB at most), 128KB WRAM, 64KB VRAM, 64KB APU RAM, ?KB SRAM, additional memory on special-chip cartridges.
Do you know how much data is processed by a typical modern computer game on each frame, at 60 FPS? (After all, we are talking about modern PCs, not PCs of the early 90's.)
Those amounts of data you are listing aren't much. They all fit into processor caches quite nicely, several times. Copying them around doesn't take much time.
I don't think it's the amount of data that's the problem.
That's unlikely. You either have to copy the entire internal state
Which is what? Something like 2 kilobytes on the NES? Hardly sounds something that couldn't be copied around 60 times per second. (Even if we go to the SNES, it would be something like 128 kilobytes. Still sounds like an amount of data that can be copied around pretty fast.)
I happen to teach undergraduate programmers, so I have some idea about this.
......
Don't attempt to learn C++ without professional help. (And even then, you need good professional help.)
I won't tell you that I have learned VC# by myself.
Perhaps emulator developers could study the possibility of making savestates a lot more efficient so that they could be done on each frame without affecting the emulation speed...
hi warp. if I rAte OoT run with something less than 2 in entertainment because I find watching it to be worse than boring I will get harassed by people telling me I hate the author and don't deserve to be able to rate and that Im just vandalizing the ratings and that I dig in theg arbage. if I explain to them that I think watching it Izmir worse than boring they will call me a liar and stupid and vandal and that I just hate the author. ESPECIALLY if I choose to not give it a tech rating. if they can't see that I rated it, they won't know to harass me.
Well, you just let the bag out and I don't see anybody harassing you.
Anyway, if someone is behaving in an inappropriate way, you can report them to the admins.
