Out of curiosity?

Is there people out there who can actually program in binary code, and if so, do you think for whatever reason they would write programs like this? Would there be any advantages of writing in this form?

I take it you mean 'assembler' and not 'binary code'.

I had to program in binary once for a class (sort of), but I don't know why the hell you'd ever want to do that for an actual program.

Basically it was like Salem said, though. We wrote the program in assembler and converted all the commands to opcodes, then to their binary equivalents.

I used to know how to toggle the boot code into a PDP-11 using the front panel key switches - does that count?

I once destroyed a team of man-killing setinels using only the power of my mind....oh no, hang on, that was Neo in the Matrix!

:)

I don't use linkers and assemblers after I write my high-level language programs. I convert them and piece them together manually just for the challenge!

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Originally Posted by Salem

I used to know how to toggle the boot code into a PDP-11 using the front panel key switches - does that count?

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Has your bus pass arrived in the post yet? ;)

Assembler is fun to use, if you can understand that there are some serious restrictions on register usage at times (8086 code is awkward) and you also have a good reference on the hardware interrupts of the computer you're programming.

The main advantage of it in modern programming is size. A modern C/C++ compiler will optimise all but the most spaghetti-oh code so it runs as fast as its assembler equivalent. However, you do have to attach a few KB of C runtime to the program, or even C++ runtime (which is bigger). These may well contain routines that you aren't using in your code. Assembler eschews all that, but obviously if you need to do a lot of work with floating-point numbers, exception handling, etc. you may find yourself writing your own runtime library, which sort-of defeats the point. :rolleyes: