Once we’ve built a computer, the next step is to develop an assembly language and then an assembler that can assemble our programs. In my previous column, we introduced the concept of the big-endian ...

A recent edition of [Babbage’s] The Chip Letter discusses the obscurity of assembly language. He points out, and I think correctly, that assembly language is more often read than written, yet nearly ...

Today we are very used to running a rich variety of operating systems and programs on our mobile devices, from Office on a Windows laptop to a game on our Android smartphones, we are accustomed to ...

The history of computing could arguably be divided into three eras: that of mainframes, minicomputers, and microcomputers. Minicomputers provided an important bridge between the first mainframes and ...

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this two-part mini-series, odd ideas are popping in and out of my head all the time, and every now and then I share my ponderings with the readers of Programmable Logic ...

Every software program is written in a programming language, and there are several languages for every major CPU series; typically an assembly language and a number of high-level languages. Assembly ...

The instructions a programmer writes when creating a program. Lines of code are the "source code" of the program, and one line may generate one machine instruction or several depending on the ...