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From: rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: assembly programming prefereable to HLL programming ?
Message-ID: <385@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Dec-86 01:50:47 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.385
Posted: Wed Dec 10 01:50:47 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Dec-86 20:52:52 EST
References: <646@instable.UUCP> <476@atari.UUcp> <8@blipyramid.BLI.COM>
Reply-To: rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch)
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 40

From previous articles....
> i've done a significant amount of development work
> in assembly language on a macintosh (68k), and i didn't have any real
> trouble coding "high-level" constructs.  sneaky c data structures like
> linked lists and unions are no harder to create or understand in a
> sufficiently rugged assembly language than they are in c.

Most programmers don't have trouble coding in assembly language, it's
just that they code faster in a HLL.  If the language provides
support for things like type checking, they code more reliably in a
HLL as well.  Assembly language does not provide these "luxuries".
("Sufficiently rugged assembly language"?  By this do you mean an
assembly language with control structures, data structures, and type
checking?  How is a "sufficiently rugged assembly language"
different from a HLL?)  

In this regard I should point out that C is only barely a HLL, and
should be nominated to replace FORTRAN as the world's most popular
assembly language.


> one other point:  i think it's important for a human
> to know that such instructions exist.  forget optimizers.  you'll write
> better code if you understand your machine's instruction set.  every
> assembly hacker knows the native integer size, byte ordering, and so forth,
> for the machine he/she works on.  that's not true for every c programmer.

The whole point is that HLL programmers DO NOT need to think about
such things, because most of the time it is not important.  Who
cares about all that stuff?  Sure, some of the time it matters, and
then you (or someone) needs to know it.  But most of the time (and
for most of the code) it does NOT matter, and what the compiler
generates is acceptable.


"Can you say 'BALR'?  Horrors!"

cheers,

txr