I once asked GNU people why they had such weird non-standard syntax for inline x86 assembly. Their answer was that the GNU syntax was just easier to implement i

I once asked GNU people why they had such weird non-standard syntax for inline x86 assembly. Their answer was that the GNU syntax was just easier to implement in their existing toolchain of the day. Their big idea was to have a semi-universal implementation of the assembler where a particular CPU syntax was just a small, mostly declarative piece of code and configuration. The support of the canonical Intel syntax for x86 assembly would require significantly more efforts. As far as I know, the idea of a weird but universal assembly syntax came from the original Unix developed by AT&T. My take was: come on, it's just a syntax, a relatively miniscule effort required to implement the idiomatic x86 assembly support is nothing compared to pains a custom non-standard syntax may give to people.