A Congressman Who Can Code Assembly

christo writes "In what appears to be a first, the US House of Representatives now has a Congressman with coding skills. Democratic Representative Bill Foster won a special election this past Saturday in the 14th Congressional District of Illinois. Foster is a physicist who worked at Fermilab for 22 years designing data analysis software for the lab's high energy particle collision detector. In an interview with CNET today, Foster's campaign manager confirmed that the Congressman can write assembly, Fortran and Visual Basic. Will having a tech-savvy congressman change the game at all? Can we expect more rational tech-policy? Already on his first day, Foster provided a tie-breaking vote to pass a major ethics reform bill."

In other news

[Harmonious Botch]

...workers at the Illinois Voter's Department are investigating the results of the election. "We didn't know that a Diebold machine could register 68% for one candidate and 100% for another," said their spokesman.

Now maybe...

[Foobar of Borg]

Now maybe he can hack into the C-Span system so that, when he gives a speech before the House, it shows him as "Bill Foster (D-1337)".

What Assambly?

[Anonymous Coward]

8086? MIPS? ARM? Would be nice to know.

Assembly language and VB?

[rucs_hack]

What kind of half breed freak is this guy?

Don't get your hopes up

[mnmn]

... he's a Visual Basic guy.

Re:thats great and all..

[Foobar of Borg]

But I'd rather see a Congressman who can write sensible legislature.

Well, maybe he can start drafting all the legislation he proposes using IF-THEN-ELSE statements. If anyone complains, he can declare the House to be full of n00bs.

As a scientist from fermilab...

[nebaz]

Not only can he code assembly, he has his own private store of antimatter.

Re:thats great and all..

[SatanicPuppy]

If he drafts it in assembly it'll probably be more readable than normal legislation.

Re:In other news

[A beautiful mind]

...and somehow the results were counted very fast!

Strictly Enumerated Powers

[MSTCrow5429]

Can we expect more rational tech-policy?

Your copy of the US Constitution must be different than mine.

Cook county uses sequoia voting systems

[Joe The Dragon]

Cook county uses sequoia voting systems

Re:Hey, I did that!

[Anonymous Coward]

an old Digital PHP system

heh

The data acquisition code was, naturally, in assembly

With a newer computer, you'd have enough grunt to write the same thing in a high-level scripting languages, such as PDP.

Don't blame me

[nthwaver]

Don't blame me, I voted for Clippy.

Re:What Assambly?

[RAMMS+EIN]

That's so nerdy. A congressman can code assembly, and all you ask is "what kind?". I like. :-D

Re:thats great and all..

[rrohbeck]

If he drafts it in assembly it'll probably be more readable than normal legislation.

Thank goodness he doesn't know Perl.

Say what?

[zappepcs]

I know that not everyone is Einstein smart, but it does not take a rocket scientist to know that mixing assembler in the house will cause divide by zero errors.

He'll have to learn the difference between NOP and Abstain

Nowhere in the "xxx programming for dummies" books does it talk about kissing babies.

Impeaching a president is nothing like getting funding for your pet project, though the process might seem familiar.

Re:What Assambly?

[TheRaven64]

It was my thought too. Well, my second thought. My first was 'he can code in assembly and FORTRAN and admits to knowing VB?'

Re:What Assambly?

[frosty_tsm]

It was my thought too. Well, my second thought. My first was 'he can code in assembly and FORTRAN and admits to knowing VB?'

I sense a scandal brewing on just how much VB he knows...

Re:It doesn't guarantee much

[Anonymous Coward]

Flawless Victory. Thread Over.

Well, if he's a FORTRAN programmer

[hey!]

we'll be seeing computed gotos written into laws. In other words, same-old, same-old.

Probably a good congressman

[A beautiful mind]

Foster's positions in the following 14th congressional district election included ending involvement in the War in Iraq, increasing the amount of money used to fund alternative energy research, and enforcing existing immigration laws while allowing for immigration reform to take place. He also supports universal health care. Fiscally, Foster publically stated that he would align himself with other Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. The Blue Dog Coalition focuses on fiscal responsibility and reducing the national debt.

So wikipedia says he's not an idiot on important issues and he has a science background? I'm sold!

My first question, Congressman ...

[ClickOnThis]

vi or emacs?

Re:Assembly language and VB?

[Himring]

What kind of half breed freak is this guy?

Nazgul, once Kings of assembly, they now serve the dark lord....

Re:What Assambly?

[TooMuchToDo]

"I am code contributor #9"

Re:Don't get your hopes up

[jgrahn]

... he's a Visual Basic guy.

Worse -- he knows Visual Basic and admits it. He could just have listed Fortran and assembly, and we'd have worshipped him as an Old School physics geek.

This is almost as bad as watching "Sound of Music" and realizing that Fräulein Maria probably has sex with Von Trapp halfway through the movie.

Re:Assembly language and VB?

[rucs_hack]

You witnessed anti-microsoft elitism.

The loudest anti-VB crusaders were the same people where were all over the Java bandwagon, even though everything bad they had to say about VB applied equally to Java.

Perhaps, I will admit there was a tendency to use non Microsoft controlled languages, but also we didn't learn much Java. We covered lots of obscure languages, too many to list here, and C/C++. The brief time we were taught Java wasn't exactly well organised, and it wasn't considered interesting as a language by most lecturers.

As for myself I prefer C, although I have been seeing Python behind its back recently.
Yes, Yes, I know when you start seeing another language it's probably time to break it off with your current language, but her structs are so, well, comfortable...

Re:thats great and all..

[IthnkImParanoid]

But does he know LOLCAT?

OH HAI

IF MY_COOKIE.YOU_EATED_IT
  GOTO JAYL
IF U.BE_TAKIN(MAH BUCKET)
  GIV_MEH_BAK(MAH_BUCKET)
  GOTO JAYL
IF U.KILL(MY_MANS O MY_WOMANS)
  GOTO LECRIC_CHARE

GIV_MEH(ALL_U_MONEY * .4)

KTHXBYE

Be Extremely Suspicious...

[Anonymous Coward]

... of anyone who puts Visceral Basic on a CV...

Re:What Assambly?

[TempeTerra]

I sense a scandal brewing on just how much VB he knows...

"But I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not code binary relations with that language, Visual Basic. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false."

Yes, but...

[cleatsupkeep]

Does he run Linux? Will he blend?

Re:Well, if he's a FORTRAN programmer

[Alinabi]

If he's a FORTRAN programmer maybe he should run for the House of COMMONs instead

Assembly Coder

[k4_pacific]

The article title reminds me of an exhange that occured in a meeting. We were co-developing a project with a customer and one of the customer's programmers was an old-time assembly programmer who never quite got the hang of high-level languages like C++. We were discussing some bug that was found in some of his unreadable code after a week or so of investigation.

My manager: It appears that this issue was found in some code that Bob wrote.

Their manager: But Bob's a great programmer. He can even knows how to code in assembly.

My manager: Great, can you have him stop coding like it's assembly?

CVS

[HungWeiLo]

Maybe it's the perfect opportunity to get all legislation into CVS.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to make the obvious humor examples.

Re:Nerdiest president

[Valdrax]

That's nothing. The man was a freaking genius if rumors are true. Supposedly, he could write in Latin with one hand and in Ancient Greek in the other at the same time. Of course, that could just be legendary.

Re:Now maybe...

[Sponge Bath]

Why would he want to be known as "Delete"?

Because "backspace" sounds gay.

Correction

[rsborg]

This is almost as bad as watching "Sound of Music" and missing the part where Fräulein Maria has sex with Von Trapp halfway through the movie.

That would have made it worth the rest :-)

Re:Assembly language and VB?

[Goaway]

Seldom has a username been so relevant.

Difference?

[ozbird]

Assembler coding? About the only difference in Congress that would make over your average Congress critter is when the lobbyists click their fingers and tell him to jump, he'll ask "how far", not "how high."

Re:Nerdiest president

[waferbuster]

Not 'legendary', just legerdemain [reference.com] .

Re:Well, if he's a FORTRAN programmer

[tomhudson]

Actually, if he programs in assembler, he's not a congressman - he's an assemblyman.

Re:Don't get your hopes up

[dagard]

Oh, come on, we've all made mistakes. That doesn't mean we don't love our wife^Wperl, it's just that, well, we were tempted.

Re:thats great and all..

[eck011219]

Eeek! Conditional legislation? With all due respect, things are muddy enough as it is!

Re:thats great and all..

[Foobar of Borg]

And then Bush vetoes the bill claiming "syntax error".

:-) And after Congress overrides the veto, the Supreme Court prevents execution of the code saying "Segmentation Fault (core dumped)"

My fellow Americans,

[blackbeaktux]

My fellow Americans,

;Begin Speech
MASK EQU $0000000F
HEXPRINT MOVEM.L
SUBQ.W D1/D4-D7/A0/A3,-(A7)
#1,D4
LOOP ROL.L
MOVE.B
ANDI.L
MOVEA.L
MOVE.B #4,D5
D5,D6
#MASK,D6
D6,A3
TABLE(PC,A3),D7

ACIARDY MOVE.B
AND.B
BEQ.S
MOVE.B
DBRA
MOVEM.L
RTS (A0),D1
#2,D1
ACIARDY
D7,2(A0)
D4,LOOP
(A7)+,D1/D4-D7/A0/A3

TABLE DC.B '0123456789ABCDEF' ;End Speech

Thank you, and may God bless America. Good Night.

Re:Hey, I did that!

[poot_rootbeer]

They had electronic detectors triggered various ways sending data to an old Digital PHP system that was supposed to analyze each event as quickly as possible, decide whether it was interesting enough to save to magnetic tape, and then go on to the next event a few microseconds later.

Unfortunately they were using the built-in PHP functions for accessing magnetic tape, and had magic_quotes disabled, so a hacker was able to use an injection exploit and write 5MB of 'PWNT!!!1" to the tapes.