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> CISC has always been much nicer to hard write assembly code in than RISC is. I don't see this. Do you have any examples? x86 was only "nicer" for the first 1
by duaneb 11y ago
> CISC has always been much nicer to hard write assembly code in than RISC is.
I don't see this. Do you have any examples? x86 was only "nicer" for the first 10 hours of assembly—and if you're writing your own (dis)assembler, it's about 10x harder than any risc. It's also much harder to compute cycle time, which is the only reason I can think of to be staring at assembly for multiple hours (as opposed to e.g. c).
It's also much harder to get "good" at x86, and it mostly consists of learning the subset of x86 that is actually optimized in the way you might expect. The vast majority of instructions you shouldn't be using at all.
- dietrichepp 11y agox86 was designed back when people wrote significant chunks of code in assembly not because they wanted to shave some time off a critical subroutine, but because they didn't even have a compiler. Under those conditions, I'd rather have x86 than PowerPC or ARM, it's just less typing.
- duaneb 11y agoWhile this is true, that form of coding is... dead. It doesn't produce better compilation backends—if you're working with strings, chances are the compiler will ignore most of the string instructions but LODS/LODSB/LODSW/LODSD.