MMIX Debugger

Alberto Einstein had been working for many years on his thesis so that he could finally complete his PhD in Computer Science when he had a breakthrough: he had discovered a sorting algorithm that runs in constant time. Such a development would not only run Google out of business but change the entire usage of computers in the future. However, Alberto knew he would need to test his sorting algorithm before he dare publicize his results. He decided to use MMIX as his testing algorithm as he knew how much respect others had for MMIX’s creator Donald Knuth. Alberto first used the MMIX Editor to create his sort algorithm in MMIX format and after compiling it into mms format, he used the MMOType Viewer to see the human readable version of the compiled results.

Satisfied that what he written looked correct, Alberto decide to execute the code and was shocked that the results did not run in constant time but rather nlog(n) as other sorting algorithms do. Rather than pulling his hair out and cursing humanity, Alberto decided to use the debugging feature including in the MMIX IDE. Using the MMIX Editor, he added breakpoints to key areas of his code and then clicked on the run in debugger button. The IDE switched from editor to debugger perspective which allows the user to see the results in the console, registry and RAM states, line of code execution, and number of instructions executed for each breakpoint.

After reviewing all of the different registry and RAM states (viewable by scrolling past the initial values) and seeing the computation time for each step, Alberto realized that his algorithm was in fact flawed. Devastated, Alberto decided to drop out of school and open his own restaurant named Alberto’s Burger Shack.