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From: jhc@mtung.UUCP (Jonathan Clark)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: SMAL/80 ("high-level assembler")
Message-ID: <573@mtung.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 10:17:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtung.573
Posted: Wed Jun 12 10:17:16 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Jun-85 00:44:42 EDT
References: <196@yetti.UUCP>
Reply-To: jhc@mtung.UUCP (966-Jonathan Clark)
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 28
Keywords: Assembly, HOL, SMAL/80
Summary: 

<>
Please God save us from any more high-level assemblers, like
SMAL, or PL/Z, or anything else (not macro assemblers,
though. They are very useful - in the right context).

My immediate reaction when faced with a SMAL program is to
get the assembler output and then convert that into 'real'
assembler code. SMAL just gets in the way of the underlying
machine - although you can write 'high-level' you still
have to know what's going on underneath (for example, you
have to know what instructions the SMAL is translated into
so that you can jump on the correct flag (carry, overflow,
etc)).  Personally I think this is bad, and that a C and
assembler mix is a reasonable compromise between
development time, software quality, speed and codesize, and
so on.

Another favourite moan while I'm on the subject - I do hate
writing in (cross-) assembler under UNIX because the opcodes
and assembler format are always different from the
manufacturers. Anyone know whether this was done to avoid
copyright problems, to keep all the assemblers looking the
same, or just to discourage people from writing in low-level
languages?

-- 
Jonathan Clark
[NAC]!mtung!jhc