[ale] why not asm

[jeff hubbs]

Not to mention that C, etc. hide the cogs behind things like 
floating-point and integer math, not to mention implementation of trig 
functions, etc.

Assembly is for very specific and direct applications for which 
portability across CPUs is a non-issue.  You'd write the SW for an 
engine management computer on a car in assembly.  You'd code up a VCR's 
control computer in assembly.

- Jeff

Irv Mullins wrote:

> On Wednesday 19 December 2001 11:04 pm, you wrote:
> 
>>why dont people use asembly more often? supposedly its
>>about as easy to code asembly as it is c, supposedly
>>the processors have different coding for asm but cant
>>they agree and or os just be slightly coded
>>differently for diff procs?
>>
> 
> Not just slightly different - completely different code is needed 
> for different processors, and for the same processor but different 
> os. For example, input and output instructions are completely 
> different for DOS, Linux, and Windows on the same pentium pc.
> 
> C code comes with libraries that hide most of these differences, 
> that's why people would rather use C than assembler. Most other 
> programming languages do an even better job of hiding the differences, 
> but many are only written for one or two platforms, while C is available 
> for just about anything.
> 
> Further, some jobs, like disk i/o and file management are extremely 
> simple in C (or any higher level language) but can get complex in 
> assembly. Most people prefer conveniences like type checking,
> bounds checking, meaningful error messages, etc. which you don't 
> get with assembler. A good programming language might warn you:
> of an "attempt to access the 14th element of a 12 element array",  
> while the same mistake in assembler might reformat your drive.
> 
> Regards,
> Irv
> 
> 
> ---
> This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
> See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
> sent to listmaster at ale dot org.
> 
> 
> 




---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.