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What you are proposing is so terrible in practice that people have invented hundreds of programming languages to escape it. Millions of person-hours have been

by mkl 3y ago

What you are proposing is so terrible in practice that people have invented hundreds of programming languages to escape it. Millions of person-hours have been spent on getting away from what you say is desirable.

sylware 3y ago
You are right in a legacy context where the mess of ISAs required an abstraction of the assembly language. But where you are wrong is, moving forward in a world with a modern worldwide standard ISA (RISC-V) is actually writing a kernel in assembly (without abusing any preprocessing).
- mkl 3y ago
  People have had the ability to do that for decades, and they have almost always chosen not to when they had the option, because it's terrible. RISC-V is nothing revolutionary on that front, and doesn't magically make it better. Without preprocessing you won't have variable names or jump label names or strings, which is even more terrible. Please give us some actual evidence, instead of just saying "you're wrong", because the position you're taking seems extreme and, frankly, bonkers.
  - sylware 3y ago
    I said without abusing the preprocessing, not without preprocessing at all. My opinion is this is wrong, and I did voice my disagrement and gave my own view on the matter. If there is something extreme here is the karma slash upon displeasing the pro rust people and AI bots on HN.
    - jodrellblank 3y ago
      > "If there is something extreme here is the karma slash upon displeasing the pro rust people and AI bots on HN." It's refusing to backup your position with anything more than saying "you're wrong" "you're wrong" "you're wrong". You've repeatedly been asked to explain why RISC_V would be better, why RISC_V changes anything, what you propose for how it would work (e.g. emulators), and you haven't. That's annoying, timewasting, and downvoteworthy.
      - sylware 3y ago
        Again, this is wrong, actually a lie in regards of what I have been saying on this thrtead. I have been giving my opinion and explaining all along in all parts of this threads my views and opinions. This is so bluntly disregading everything, I think you may very probably be a AI bot with a very small context window.
        PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        I'm not a bot. Can you clarify your answer for me, please?
- MobiusHorizons 3y ago
  RISC-v assembly is not substantially easier to write than any other assembly. RISC assemblies in general (aka MIPS, Arm, RV64 etc) require more instructions to accomplish the same tasks. I would argue they are designed with compilers in mind more than human authors. Older assemblies expected the programmer to be programming in assembly directly, which is why they allow you to express your intent more directly than RISC. Humans of course can and do write assembly in all of these, but risc-v has not somehow made assembly programming any safer or more portable than it ever was.
  - sylware 3y ago
    RISC-V is a modern load-store ISA. Is is very clean, much more than the mess of x86_64 for instance. It is actually better to write RISC-V than x86_64, even if the later is CISC.
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      Even if this is true, which I agree it is, it’s still a 100x more painful than writing a programming language and compiling to RISC-V. That also gives you the benefit of compiling to multiple arch’s
      - sylware 3y ago
        This is where you are wrong: it will take more time, be a bit more painful and require a different training... but your code will be shielded against compiler and language complexity and planned obsolescence, which has stellar value on the long run. Short term-ists won't understand as this is going for the long run, and that requires perspective of what happened in software in the last decades.
        fl0ki 3y ago
        > it will take more time, be a bit more painful and require a different training... but your code will be shielded against compiler and language complexity and planned obsolescence, which has stellar value on the long run. This is a bit of a stretch. Not one ISA has lived longer than C without making any changes whatsoevever, but I admit that this could at least be possible for some kinds of devices. What is utterly ludicrous is to suggest that people write code only in RISC-V because all hardware ever built in future will somehow agree to only use RISC-V. If any hardware ever uses any other ISA, then we're back where we started, writing in higher-level languages that can compile to multiple ISAs. What do you believe will fundamentally change this? Anyway, your argument about churn is flawed from a simpler angle anyway. When C, C++, or Rust evolves in future, existing code continues to work. That's the very opposite of "planned obsolescence", it's ensuring that past investment continues to pay future rewards. The ISO working groups and the Rust team go to enormous lengths to ensure code remains compatible while making new advancements. I don't know how much of these processes you've observed in the past, but if you're calling them "planned obsolescence" I would urge you to learn more about them before producing critiques. An ISA can also continue to evolve in strictly backwards-compatible ways, but history has shown there are many reasons that multiple ISAs can coexist and that newer ones may supersede older ones without backwards compatibility. RISC-V may avoid some of those factors, but as it's barely been adopted in the real world at all yet, it's a bit premature to somehow presume it's the last word on ISAs and no new ISAs should ever be created ever again.
- aeonik 3y ago
  What makes RISC-V special here? You speak as if RISC-V has some fundamental differences that invalidates old limitations that keep us trapped. Why is this the case? I'm very curious, and don't understand. Also, why does preprocessing matter so much?
  - sylware 3y ago
    RISC-V is a real free, worldwide standard for a modern and good enough ISA, and that changes everything, namely "moving forward" is not going to be the same than in a legacy context with those locked, non free ISAs. Preprocessing does matter because it would be pointless to get rid of the compiler complexity to get instead preprocessing complexity. For instance x86_64 assembler fasmg has the most powerful preprocessor out there.... because the assembler is actually written using this preprocessor language! So it is very easy to "slip" and to end up using excessively this prepropressor to actually write assembly code which is not an assembler!

by mkl 3y ago

sylware 3y ago

You are right in a legacy context where the mess of ISAs required an abstraction of the assembly language. But where you are wrong is, moving forward in a world with a modern worldwide standard ISA (RISC-V) is actually writing a kernel in assembly (without abusing any preprocessing).

mkl 3y ago
People have had the ability to do that for decades, and they have almost always chosen not to when they had the option, because it's terrible. RISC-V is nothing revolutionary on that front, and doesn't magically make it better. Without preprocessing you won't have variable names or jump label names or strings, which is even more terrible. Please give us some actual evidence, instead of just saying "you're wrong", because the position you're taking seems extreme and, frankly, bonkers.
- sylware 3y ago
  I said without abusing the preprocessing, not without preprocessing at all. My opinion is this is wrong, and I did voice my disagrement and gave my own view on the matter. If there is something extreme here is the karma slash upon displeasing the pro rust people and AI bots on HN.
  - jodrellblank 3y ago
    > "If there is something extreme here is the karma slash upon displeasing the pro rust people and AI bots on HN." It's refusing to backup your position with anything more than saying "you're wrong" "you're wrong" "you're wrong". You've repeatedly been asked to explain why RISC_V would be better, why RISC_V changes anything, what you propose for how it would work (e.g. emulators), and you haven't. That's annoying, timewasting, and downvoteworthy.
    - sylware 3y ago
      Again, this is wrong, actually a lie in regards of what I have been saying on this thrtead. I have been giving my opinion and explaining all along in all parts of this threads my views and opinions. This is so bluntly disregading everything, I think you may very probably be a AI bot with a very small context window.
      - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
        I'm not a bot. Can you clarify your answer for me, please?
MobiusHorizons 3y ago
RISC-v assembly is not substantially easier to write than any other assembly. RISC assemblies in general (aka MIPS, Arm, RV64 etc) require more instructions to accomplish the same tasks. I would argue they are designed with compilers in mind more than human authors. Older assemblies expected the programmer to be programming in assembly directly, which is why they allow you to express your intent more directly than RISC. Humans of course can and do write assembly in all of these, but risc-v has not somehow made assembly programming any safer or more portable than it ever was.
- sylware 3y ago
  RISC-V is a modern load-store ISA. Is is very clean, much more than the mess of x86_64 for instance. It is actually better to write RISC-V than x86_64, even if the later is CISC.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    Even if this is true, which I agree it is, it’s still a 100x more painful than writing a programming language and compiling to RISC-V. That also gives you the benefit of compiling to multiple arch’s
    - sylware 3y ago
      This is where you are wrong: it will take more time, be a bit more painful and require a different training... but your code will be shielded against compiler and language complexity and planned obsolescence, which has stellar value on the long run. Short term-ists won't understand as this is going for the long run, and that requires perspective of what happened in software in the last decades.
      - fl0ki 3y ago
        > it will take more time, be a bit more painful and require a different training... but your code will be shielded against compiler and language complexity and planned obsolescence, which has stellar value on the long run. This is a bit of a stretch. Not one ISA has lived longer than C without making any changes whatsoevever, but I admit that this could at least be possible for some kinds of devices. What is utterly ludicrous is to suggest that people write code only in RISC-V because all hardware ever built in future will somehow agree to only use RISC-V. If any hardware ever uses any other ISA, then we're back where we started, writing in higher-level languages that can compile to multiple ISAs. What do you believe will fundamentally change this? Anyway, your argument about churn is flawed from a simpler angle anyway. When C, C++, or Rust evolves in future, existing code continues to work. That's the very opposite of "planned obsolescence", it's ensuring that past investment continues to pay future rewards. The ISO working groups and the Rust team go to enormous lengths to ensure code remains compatible while making new advancements. I don't know how much of these processes you've observed in the past, but if you're calling them "planned obsolescence" I would urge you to learn more about them before producing critiques. An ISA can also continue to evolve in strictly backwards-compatible ways, but history has shown there are many reasons that multiple ISAs can coexist and that newer ones may supersede older ones without backwards compatibility. RISC-V may avoid some of those factors, but as it's barely been adopted in the real world at all yet, it's a bit premature to somehow presume it's the last word on ISAs and no new ISAs should ever be created ever again.
aeonik 3y ago
What makes RISC-V special here? You speak as if RISC-V has some fundamental differences that invalidates old limitations that keep us trapped. Why is this the case? I'm very curious, and don't understand. Also, why does preprocessing matter so much?
- sylware 3y ago
  RISC-V is a real free, worldwide standard for a modern and good enough ISA, and that changes everything, namely "moving forward" is not going to be the same than in a legacy context with those locked, non free ISAs. Preprocessing does matter because it would be pointless to get rid of the compiler complexity to get instead preprocessing complexity. For instance x86_64 assembler fasmg has the most powerful preprocessor out there.... because the assembler is actually written using this preprocessor language! So it is very easy to "slip" and to end up using excessively this prepropressor to actually write assembly code which is not an assembler!