I like this piece. In part 2 the author talks about the really small limited information space. Never really thought about it that way, but yeah. We all had a space of sorts and it varied widely.
My own was bit larher than the one described in the work here. Basically, I did end up with a well known programmer, school teachers, and in a bus ride away, the University library and copy machines! Hoo boy! The first time I snagged a 6502 instruction set, complete with programming model and cycle counts, detailed diagrams...
The answers to all my BASIC questions were in those pages!! But it was cryptic! A good friend and I started reading the ROM listing and were gathering any new info as quickly as we could.
The most surprising one turned out to be books and magazines from the grocery store! While Mom would shop, I would read bits here and there hoping for insight, often finding it.
Great times!
But assembly is the next installment.
https://blog.startifact.com/posts/teenage-programmer-call-of.../
Two things:
One is you had that friend! I had a few. Some had multiple computers, others just the one and maybe it was the same machine you had! Where that happened, it really helped get into computing!
And the other thought:
Your revelation! YES! Everyone who ends up understanding assembly language has some form of what you wrote happen to them, and it often means how one sees computing is never the same
We, and by that I mean my peer group and I through a lot of discussion, often near blackboards...
Blackboard you say? Indeed! Those boards one would use with chalk. None of this whiteboard rubbish thank you very much!
...that resulted in a new understanding.
Computers really only do a few things; namely, add numbers, copy numbers, and perform bit or logic operations on numbers.
All of it comes down to that!
You subtract by adding, for example. And those two mean one can multiply and divide, and so it goes, until it sinks in. Adds per second. They are not much, but a few hundred thousand of them happening per second can make magic happen!
And that kind of thing happened for you. Someone shared it and you began to internalize it.
There is one more magic conversation that tends to close the circle, and that is assembly language is all about the [redacted]. And that may have happened, but we won't know until you write that part, will we?
I have some stuff to say, but won't because that would not be appropriate in this context. And I am selfish hoping to read your experiences and enjoy them proper.
:)
That stuff was a big help. Interpreting other material, such as CPU datasheets became possible.
I got my first disassembler, for example, out of COMPUTE magazine as a BASIC language type in listing!
The Apple 2 contained a mini assembler, and the two got several of us writing our own stuff.
And there are multiple parts to this. Our peers and maybe mentors can really matter.
It always seemed unfair to teenage me that the C$ price was 20-40% more than the USD price.
Otherwise, same. Or Powells tech books! That store was amazing! Technical books of all kinds and on any topic for the reading or buying. I did a lot of reading in that store.
Just wild. I of course copied the disk to numerous friends with the gloat. “Look what I got”. Childish. Yes. But man I was NERD cool. :-)