5 ms·

That's an interesting point also - scale. I don't think programming a simple "hello world" in C or C++ would be 100x faster than in assembly (assuming you were

That's an interesting point also - scale. I don't think programming a simple "hello world" in C or C++ would be 100x faster than in assembly (assuming you were equally familiar with both languages), but I think it would be nearly impossible, or at least incredibly expensive to maintain 400 kloc of assembly. I honestly shudder at the thought.

Someone 10y ago
You would use a macro assembler, and if you have good programmers, they would effectively develop a DSL for writing your program in it. That would postpone the point at which that assembly program reaches 400kloc. In the end, it would probably grow as fast as a C program of the same functionality. Of course, they also would have to develop their own tooling around that DSL. That, I think is the problem lies with assembly. Higher level languages imply that more stuff gets shared between projects (even across companies; everybody will use the same C language and standard library), and that means time spent to develop tooling around and libraries on top of the shared stuff is useful for more people. Hence, tooling and libraries will generally be of higher quality. that home-grown GUI library built on top of a home-grown set of assembler macros using a home-grown ABI may be better than using, say, QT on top of X11, but it isn't that likely. On the other hand, the smaller the system, the more important memory usage, and if the system is small enough, that can and will swing the advantage to the home-grown system. That happens less and less, though.