readyace

Ah shoot and P.S.: so if at one point some guy was flipping switches to get the first computer programmed, how do you do that with things like quantum computers?

Hi, this is the author. Thank you both for reading the article and for responding with this information. I have been a long time lurker at HN and when I saw the traffic numbers on my blog I wondered if someone linked to the post here. It has been admittedly gratifying that at least a few people have taken an interest in my weird little musings.

Anyway. If I understand you correctly: at the bottom of it all, there is a thing called an assembler, which is a kind of compiler, that makes the code existing "above" the assembler understandable to the actual hardware.

And I'm guessing there's a reason we don't just have people coding in assembly all the time? Probably it is a huge pain to code at the assembly level? If so -- could you redesign the hardware so it is easier just to code directly, I guess, "on" the hardware? Then you wouldn't have to worry about all these languages talking to each other. Plus, I bet the computer would run faster since you don't have to have it doing as much stuff, right?

Potentially dumb question: for computers that are not electric, like mechanical computers or quantum computers, do you essentially have to make a whole new assembly language?