I have programmed by looking up op codes in a table on a sheet of paper and entering the hex codes into an EPROM programmer.
If you want some modern day fun with this, try the Zachtronics programming games; TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, and Exapunks.
Or, my personal favorite I only discovered somewhat recently, try Turing Complete. You start by designing all your logic gates from just a negate gate IIRC. You eventually build up an ALU and everything else you need and then create your own computer. Then you define your own assembly language and have to write programs in your assembly language that run on the computer you’ve designed to complete different tasks. It’s a highly underrated game, although it takes a certain type of person to enjoy.
Did this in university in the very first week, quite a few people dropped out after that 😅
Ah yes, the great filter
You are… Old?
Fucking ancient. This was for a Z80 based system using discreet logic for addressing and IO, constructed on a wire-wrapped board.
I mean, C is a high level language? Now, sure, C isn’t a super expressive language and every C statement compiles to very few assembly instructions comparatively speaking, but it has a whole lot of stuff that assembly doesn’t have. Like nice loops and other control structures and such, and not worry about which processor registers are used.
Guess what, assembly is also a high level language, lol.
I once knew somebody who supposedly thought that ASM was high level.
ASM is high level. Real programmers use punch cards
Real programmers use a magnetized needle and a steady hand.
In the modern world it’s completely subjective.
The lowest-level language is probably ASM/machine code, as many people at least edit that regularly, and the highest-level would be LLMs. They are the shittiest way to program, yes, but technically you just enter instructions and the LLM outputs eg. Python, which is then compiled to bytecode and run. Similar to how eg. Java works. And that’s the subjective part; many people (me included) don’t use LLMs as the only way to program, or only use them for convenience and some help, therefore the highest level language is probably either some drag-and-drop UI stuff (like scratch), or Python/JS. And the lowest level is either C/C++ (because “no one uses ASM anyway”), or straight up machine code.
