[ColinWright]

My first machine was a TRS-80. My first large program was a compiler from TRS-80 BASIC to Z80. I subsequently disassembled the ROM in the machine to figure out how things worked.

These skills stay with you, and if you read articles like this then you can keep broadly up-to-date with the insanity that is current CPUs. Things like pipe-lines, branch prediction, and different levels of cacheing are optimisations that you can acquire as you go.

If you're an auto-didact web developer then you never have the opportunity to learn these skills, or the need to do so.

I know a lot of people who are comfortable with doing this, but in my case it's a generational thing. If you want to do it then you can. It's not hard, it's just a different skill from those you already have, though sufficiently related that you wouldn't be starting from scratch.

But starting with modern CPUs can be hard. Learning the basics from older, simpler CPUs can help. Doing some kind of embedded programming might be the way to get started, or working on an emulator.

As always, YMMV.

[matwood]

It's odd to me to see people who don't want to understand the next level from any current level. A front end person who doesn't care how the backend works, or a backend person who doesn't care how the database works, etc... Obviously there is only so much time in the day, but being comfortable digging down to whatever level is necessary to debug something is a valuable skill.

Not sure if it's still asked, but reminds me of a class interview question. "When a user presses a button on a web page, describe in as much detail as possible what happens."

[pohl]

A compiler from what to Z80? (I think there’s a word missing in what you wrote.) I started on a Model I and I’m curious about your compiler. I miss some aspects of those old machines. It was great, as a learner, that the ROM and a DOS like L-DOS was small enough to fit in your head. It can be intimidating how large everything is today.

[ColinWright]

Now edited ... thank you.

The compiler was from a limited subset of TRS-80 BASIC to Z80. It was written in its own subset, so it could compile itself.

I had 16K of RAM, and that had to fit the BASIC source, the compiled version, and then that compiled version compiled the BASIC source to another compiled version in a different location, which could then be saved on tape.

Interesting times, and so foreign to today's experiences that it's hard for people to follow the details. I could write it up, but I'm pretty sure no one would derive any value from reading it. I sometimes wonder if the hand-written syntax flow charts and first draft are still somewhere in my piles of undiscarded papers. I doubt it ... it as 1979 when I was doing it, and I've moved continents since then.

[pohl]

That sounds like a valuable exercise. I wrote a word processor. There was an issue of 80 Micro that had a simple buffer in assembly (I think they called it Scripy) and I wrote some BASIC around it for various other functions, so that I could keep a journal and write essays for school. A compiler sounds ambitious in comparison.