Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!cedman From: cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Assembler (Re: What's Wrong with ARP!!!!) Message-ID: Date: 22 Nov 90 02:36:24 GMT References: <114.273F7E66@myamiga.UUCP> <1990Nov14.034507.19784@hoss.unl.edu> < <7039@sugar.hackercorp.com>> <90318.162021DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu> <1990Nov20.045016.8678@phoenix.pub.uu.oz.au> <7104@sugar.hackercorp.com> Organization: University of California, Irvine, USA. Lines: 58 Nntp-Posting-Host: lynx.ps.uci.edu In-reply-to: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com's message of 21 Nov 90 13:19:05 GMT In article <7104@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >Assembler is a minus ? What are you getting at ? Assembler programming > >certainly is the best and most taxing way of programming for programmers. Most taxing, yes. Best, NO! I just downloaded a program into my Amiga 3000. It came with source and the readme file went on and on about how great it was that this program was in assembler and how cool his programming style was and how mad he was that his boss was making him program in Aztec C, so he was doing this in his spare time... Crashes most beautifully on the 3000. See, there are these differences between the 68000 and the 68030. You can't see them from C, but in assembly... So what ? There is one more person who can't program well enough to know what (very few, really) things he may not do to keep his program portable. Assembler is , par se, just as binary-portable as C (among Amigas, that is). Maybe your dislike for assembler programming goes back to the fact that there is a correlation between unclean programming methods and assembler programming. That means that people who programm mainly in assembler are (on the whole) somewhat more likely to do stupid tricks. But the fact remains that you CAN program just as portably in assembler and that you can write a nightmare of incompatiblity in C (or even pascal or basic, if you want to). Coding in assembly, other then for runtimes and in critical routines, is just a waste of time. Even if your assembly code is 10 times as fast as compiled code (unlikely) your program is spending most of its time in the Amiga runtime waiting for events... That is not correct. Many applications require a great deal of internal computation. But even if it was true in every case: What do you care ? The judgement whether writing assembler for a definitive product is a waste of time or not, is a judgement of the programmer. You , as a user, really shouldn't care about how long it took the programmer to write this(that is his problem), but merely about how good a program it is. And an important part in this is speed and size. And here assembler can beat C handily. If a program is written in assembly, I tend to put it back on the shelf. Again you fail to give a reason for this. If you say: When a program is incompatible/doesn't multitask/a.s.o. then I don't use it, fine ! But really what point of criciticism is it against a real existing program in what language it was writen. When I use a program, I don't care in what language it was writen, but merely how it preforms. And assembler has at least a chance of being better than ANY high-level language. Carl Edman Theorectical Physicist,N.:A physicist whose | Send mail existence is postulated, to make the numbers | to balance but who is never actually observed | cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu in the laboratory. | edmanc@uciph0.ps.uci.edu