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I don’t understand what the hoopla is about: in assembler we deal with arrays by having to know the size of each field without giving it a second thought. The s

I don’t understand what the hoopla is about: in assembler we deal with arrays by having to know the size of each field without giving it a second thought. The solution is to learn assembler first, then move on to C. And AWK, as the next generation C doesn’t have this problem, or any of the C problems.

WalterBright 8y ago
I've written a lot of assembler code (including Empire in 100% assembler https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-11 https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-11) Assembler programs are very tedious to write, and so they tend to be rather small. You don't get any help from the non-existent compiler for even simple HLL features like static type checking.
- Annatar 8y ago
  As a demo scene coder, I have to disagree vehemently: assembler is a joy to write, at least on MC68000 and 6502 (Amiga and C=64). The only reason why I don’t write code in assembler but in C on UNIX is becuase of portability. To me, C is nothing more than a portable assembler with the extra unnecessary code because of the inefficiencies of optimizing compilers.
pjmlp 8y ago
There are quite a few reasons why using Assembly in 2018 is very niche.
- Annatar 8y ago
  What exactly are the arguments for that statement?
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    In the age of IoT and distributed computing we need portability, Assembly is the opposite of that. For stuff like SIMD we have compiler intrisics, loop vectorization and compute shaders. Even when writing straight Assembly, unless we are talking about a PIC class processor, the amount of opcodes and their behaviors across a CPU family are so broad no human manages to fit the instruction manuals on their head, several thousand pages long. Modern CPUs, aren't a Z80 on a Speccy where we could fit the opcodes and memory map on our head. So it is constrained to things like a few hundred KB PICs, people writing compiler backends, software decoding for video/audio codecs or kernel level drivers, a very specialized set of tasks, the very definition of niche.
    - Annatar 8y ago
      Sorry that you feel that way, but the presented arguments are totally bogus: - there are only two CPU's nowadays to code for, intel and ARM, so if you don't need portability across operating systems, that is manageable; and with cpp(1) macros, one might even be able to write code which would assemble across operating systems on the same processor (for example illumos and GNU/Linux on intel); - even if you use the simplest of instructions, assembler code written by a human will always beat the compiler - ALWAYS!; don't take my word for it - try it out for yourself. On slower / older systems, assembler is the only way to get the required speed. And it's fun, really lots and lots of fun to code in assembler. Not to mention that it's easy. Lots of people do it, just look at the demo / cracking scene. You're just hanging around in the wrong circles, with the wrong crowd if you think assembler is niche.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        I don't think I am the one hanging around with the wrong crowd, specially when looking for job advertisements, even on embedded space. You can keep your Assembler, my crowd rather uses C++ with intrisics when we need performance. Being part of the Demoscene was cool, like when Amiga 500 actually mattered.
        Annatar 8y ago
        For learning how the machine functions, Amiga is still very much relevant as a teaching tool, as I’ve come to experience recently. As someone who is part of the C++ experts group and maintains the GCC compilers at my organization, I will “keep my assembler” over C++ any day of the week. But in one thing I’m starting to think that you actually might be right: it is I who seem to be hanging around with the wrong crowd by being here on “Hacker News”, where actual hackers (in the MIT sense of the word) are in very short supply. The more I read what people write and how they think around here, the more n-gate.com is right, critique by critique, point for point. As it stands right now, this site is a gross misnomer.
jibal 8y ago
> I don’t understand what the hoopla is about Ignorance is not a virtue. > The solution is to learn assembler first, then move on to C So if you learn assembler first, then suddenly C has fat pointers, strings aren't NUL-terminated, and the massive code base written by millions of programmers doesn't contain any buffer overflows?
- Annatar 8y ago
  Ignorance is not a virtue. It's not ignorance, but knowledge: since I know assembler, pointers are no big deal in C. For one who does not understand how the machine functions, they are a big deal. I don't understand why understanding assembler is so hard for so many people since machine code is so simple. So if you learn assembler first, then suddenly C has fat pointers, strings aren't NUL-terminated, and the massive code base written by millions of programmers doesn't contain any buffer overflows? No, suddenly your code doesn't have those problems any more because you actually understand what's going on and how it works. It's not magic. Except apparently on "Hacker News", where hackers seem to be in very short supply.
  - jibal 8y ago
    > It's not ignorance, but knowledge "I don't understand" is clearly a statement of ignorance and not knowledge. The ignorance you expressed was about why people make an issue of something. That ignorance could be dispelled if you actually read and attempted to understand their points, but that requires qualities like humility and intellectual honesty. As a top class programmer who wrote his first ASM program in 1967, was on the C Standards committee, and has programmed at every other level, I will simply smh at the naivety and point missing of your comments, and avoid engaging you further. Ta ta.
    - Annatar 8y ago
      You go ahead and do that then. I still don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to master assembler, because noone has explicitly addressed that. If that’s “intellectual dishonesty”, so be it. That’s nothing more than a cliche Anglosaxon phrase with no real meaning. I’m interested about getting to the bottom of fighting to master assembler because that’s the real issue here, everything else is overhead. Ta ta!

WalterBright 8y ago

I've written a lot of assembler code (including Empire in 100% assembler https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-11 https://github.com/DigitalMars/Empire-for-PDP-11) Assembler programs are very tedious to write, and so they tend to be rather small. You don't get any help from the non-existent compiler for even simple HLL features like static type checking.

Annatar 8y ago
As a demo scene coder, I have to disagree vehemently: assembler is a joy to write, at least on MC68000 and 6502 (Amiga and C=64). The only reason why I don’t write code in assembler but in C on UNIX is becuase of portability. To me, C is nothing more than a portable assembler with the extra unnecessary code because of the inefficiencies of optimizing compilers.

pjmlp 8y ago

There are quite a few reasons why using Assembly in 2018 is very niche.

Annatar 8y ago
What exactly are the arguments for that statement?
- pjmlp 8y ago
  In the age of IoT and distributed computing we need portability, Assembly is the opposite of that. For stuff like SIMD we have compiler intrisics, loop vectorization and compute shaders. Even when writing straight Assembly, unless we are talking about a PIC class processor, the amount of opcodes and their behaviors across a CPU family are so broad no human manages to fit the instruction manuals on their head, several thousand pages long. Modern CPUs, aren't a Z80 on a Speccy where we could fit the opcodes and memory map on our head. So it is constrained to things like a few hundred KB PICs, people writing compiler backends, software decoding for video/audio codecs or kernel level drivers, a very specialized set of tasks, the very definition of niche.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    Sorry that you feel that way, but the presented arguments are totally bogus: - there are only two CPU's nowadays to code for, intel and ARM, so if you don't need portability across operating systems, that is manageable; and with cpp(1) macros, one might even be able to write code which would assemble across operating systems on the same processor (for example illumos and GNU/Linux on intel); - even if you use the simplest of instructions, assembler code written by a human will always beat the compiler - ALWAYS!; don't take my word for it - try it out for yourself. On slower / older systems, assembler is the only way to get the required speed. And it's fun, really lots and lots of fun to code in assembler. Not to mention that it's easy. Lots of people do it, just look at the demo / cracking scene. You're just hanging around in the wrong circles, with the wrong crowd if you think assembler is niche.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      I don't think I am the one hanging around with the wrong crowd, specially when looking for job advertisements, even on embedded space. You can keep your Assembler, my crowd rather uses C++ with intrisics when we need performance. Being part of the Demoscene was cool, like when Amiga 500 actually mattered.
      - Annatar 8y ago
        For learning how the machine functions, Amiga is still very much relevant as a teaching tool, as I’ve come to experience recently. As someone who is part of the C++ experts group and maintains the GCC compilers at my organization, I will “keep my assembler” over C++ any day of the week. But in one thing I’m starting to think that you actually might be right: it is I who seem to be hanging around with the wrong crowd by being here on “Hacker News”, where actual hackers (in the MIT sense of the word) are in very short supply. The more I read what people write and how they think around here, the more n-gate.com is right, critique by critique, point for point. As it stands right now, this site is a gross misnomer.

jibal 8y ago

> I don’t understand what the hoopla is about Ignorance is not a virtue. > The solution is to learn assembler first, then move on to C So if you learn assembler first, then suddenly C has fat pointers, strings aren't NUL-terminated, and the massive code base written by millions of programmers doesn't contain any buffer overflows?

Annatar 8y ago
Ignorance is not a virtue. It's not ignorance, but knowledge: since I know assembler, pointers are no big deal in C. For one who does not understand how the machine functions, they are a big deal. I don't understand why understanding assembler is so hard for so many people since machine code is so simple. So if you learn assembler first, then suddenly C has fat pointers, strings aren't NUL-terminated, and the massive code base written by millions of programmers doesn't contain any buffer overflows? No, suddenly your code doesn't have those problems any more because you actually understand what's going on and how it works. It's not magic. Except apparently on "Hacker News", where hackers seem to be in very short supply.
- jibal 8y ago
  > It's not ignorance, but knowledge "I don't understand" is clearly a statement of ignorance and not knowledge. The ignorance you expressed was about why people make an issue of something. That ignorance could be dispelled if you actually read and attempted to understand their points, but that requires qualities like humility and intellectual honesty. As a top class programmer who wrote his first ASM program in 1967, was on the C Standards committee, and has programmed at every other level, I will simply smh at the naivety and point missing of your comments, and avoid engaging you further. Ta ta.
  - Annatar 8y ago
    You go ahead and do that then. I still don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to master assembler, because noone has explicitly addressed that. If that’s “intellectual dishonesty”, so be it. That’s nothing more than a cliche Anglosaxon phrase with no real meaning. I’m interested about getting to the bottom of fighting to master assembler because that’s the real issue here, everything else is overhead. Ta ta!