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I was curious what this strange assembly language was, as it looked like neither Arm nor x86. Apparently the Go toolchain has its own assembly language which p

I was curious what this strange assembly language was, as it looked like neither Arm nor x86. Apparently the Go toolchain has its own assembly language which partially abstracts away some architectural differences: https://go.dev/doc/asm https://go.dev/doc/asm I wonder what the advantages are? It feels like as soon as you move away from the basics, the architecture-specific differences will negate most usefulness of the abstraction.

rob74 3y ago
I guess it's for historical reasons. As the document you linked states, "The assembler is based on the input style of the Plan 9 assemblers". It's important to know that at least two of the "founding fathers" of Go (Rob Pike and Ken Thompson) are ex-Bell Labs guys and were involved with Plan 9. The Plan 9 compiler toolchain was available, they were familiar with it, so that's what they used for Go. Some parts of the toolchain (the linker, I think) have been swapped out in the meantime, but the assembly format has stayed. EDIT: found the document talking about changing the linker: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D13QhciikbdLtaI67U6Ble5d_1nsI4befEd6_k1z91U/view#heading=h.g4m43nddv64t https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D13QhciikbdLtaI67U6Ble5d... . Favorite quote: > The original linker was also simpler than it is now and its implementation fit in one Turing award winner’s head, so there’s little abstraction or modularity. Unfortunately, as the linker grew and evolved, it retained its lack of structure, and our sole Turing award winner retired. ...which is referring to Ken Thompson I guess.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  It's not just historical, it's more "the same justification as back then".
yencabulator 3y ago
Rob Pike's talk The Design of the Go Assembler from GopherCon 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINIAgRpkDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINIAgRpkDA

rob74 3y ago

I guess it's for historical reasons. As the document you linked states, "The assembler is based on the input style of the Plan 9 assemblers". It's important to know that at least two of the "founding fathers" of Go (Rob Pike and Ken Thompson) are ex-Bell Labs guys and were involved with Plan 9. The Plan 9 compiler toolchain was available, they were familiar with it, so that's what they used for Go. Some parts of the toolchain (the linker, I think) have been swapped out in the meantime, but the assembly format has stayed. EDIT: found the document talking about changing the linker: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D13QhciikbdLtaI67U6Ble5d_1nsI4befEd6_k1z91U/view#heading=h.g4m43nddv64t https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D13QhciikbdLtaI67U6Ble5d... . Favorite quote: > The original linker was also simpler than it is now and its implementation fit in one Turing award winner’s head, so there’s little abstraction or modularity. Unfortunately, as the linker grew and evolved, it retained its lack of structure, and our sole Turing award winner retired. ...which is referring to Ken Thompson I guess.

yencabulator 3y ago
It's not just historical, it's more "the same justification as back then".

yencabulator 3y ago

Rob Pike's talk The Design of the Go Assembler from GopherCon 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINIAgRpkDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINIAgRpkDA