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It is a little misleading isn't it? I miss the old assembler. It could just be that I have a poor memory, but with 8/16-bit assembly, I could remember almost

It is a little misleading isn't it? I miss the old assembler. It could just be that I have a poor memory, but with 8/16-bit assembly, I could remember almost everything about my toolset and focus on the problem. With modern APIs and languages--even modern assembly languages--I spend more time googling than anything else.

bad_user 9y ago
I remember the 16-bit "real mode" assembly of Intel's 286 CPU very well. > focus on the problem Think harder, you might remember that you weren't solving many problems either.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  Not true. Programmed micros for practical things--many of which are still in service. Modest hardware forced us to focus on the task rather than presentation. Modern hardware raised the stakes and forced us to spend more time (in some cases, the majority of the time) on packaging and presentation--even where it didn't really matter that much after the sale. I'm not talking iPhones were a human interacts with it constantly. I'm talking control systems, where after the sale, human interaction is simple and rare.
- rbanffy 9y ago
  > I remember the 16-bit "real mode" assembly of Intel's 286 CPU very well. Those CPUs already started being complicated enough to make ASM programming less attractive. IIRC, on 286 the string copy instructions were faster than the DMA transfers people used on earlier PCs and, because of that, if you wanted to have optimal performance, you'd need to check which CPU it was running and branch accordingly to the best code path.
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    > if you wanted to have optimal performance, you'd need to check which CPU it was running and branch accordingly to the best code path. The Intel C Compiler still does that. It compiles multiple versions of your code, each optimized for different processor versions.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    I'd blame it more on 286 being trash than actual complexity. I remember doing MIPS ASM in the early 90s, and it was a joy.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      When I learned MIPS on the university using SPIM, Pentiums 75 MHz were still fresh and I knew Z80 and x86 Assembly quite well. The way some instructions were neither macros nor actual CPU instructions always felt strange to me.

bad_user 9y ago

I remember the 16-bit "real mode" assembly of Intel's 286 CPU very well. > focus on the problem Think harder, you might remember that you weren't solving many problems either.

jstewartmobile 9y ago
Not true. Programmed micros for practical things--many of which are still in service. Modest hardware forced us to focus on the task rather than presentation. Modern hardware raised the stakes and forced us to spend more time (in some cases, the majority of the time) on packaging and presentation--even where it didn't really matter that much after the sale. I'm not talking iPhones were a human interacts with it constantly. I'm talking control systems, where after the sale, human interaction is simple and rare.
rbanffy 9y ago
> I remember the 16-bit "real mode" assembly of Intel's 286 CPU very well. Those CPUs already started being complicated enough to make ASM programming less attractive. IIRC, on 286 the string copy instructions were faster than the DMA transfers people used on earlier PCs and, because of that, if you wanted to have optimal performance, you'd need to check which CPU it was running and branch accordingly to the best code path.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  > if you wanted to have optimal performance, you'd need to check which CPU it was running and branch accordingly to the best code path. The Intel C Compiler still does that. It compiles multiple versions of your code, each optimized for different processor versions.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  I'd blame it more on 286 being trash than actual complexity. I remember doing MIPS ASM in the early 90s, and it was a joy.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    When I learned MIPS on the university using SPIM, Pentiums 75 MHz were still fresh and I knew Z80 and x86 Assembly quite well. The way some instructions were neither macros nor actual CPU instructions always felt strange to me.