Elysian Shadows

mv2112 wrote:Assembly is pretty much as close to machine code as your gonna get, this means that assembly is fast, simply because there is no extra "crap" in the code and is directly run by your processor.

MadPumpkin wrote:Assembly=Masochism
For more information see mv2112's above post :P. I can honestly only think of one game that was written in assembly. I do realize that plenty were made in assembly in the stone era, but I can only THINK of one. Which is Sonic. I thought it was pretty amazing that a game with that much math could run on a Genesis, till I found out it was in assembly :P. But if you want to know more about it read up on it, it's pretty interesting stuff. Trying to make any sort of graphical software with it is what I like to describe as "submitting your brain to torture". People of course will argue, but even they will tell you how much easier it is and a better idea to write with C\++\#, Python or anything else for that matter.

GyroVorbis wrote:Y'know, there seems to always be a common misconception revolving around "don't use assembly unless you're very very good at optimization."

The C/++ programming language has limitations that often (at an engineering level) MUST be handled in assembly routines. I do realize that this is a very computer-science majory-y oriented board, but lets not forget several things:

1) C provides NO way of accessing hardware registers.

Why does this matter you may ask? 99% of the time it doesn't. But what happens when you are in an embedded environment where peripherals are not memory-mapped (thus cannot be addressed in memory from C/++) and must be directly manipulated via inline assembly?

2) C provides no construct to handle architecture-specific opcodes.

Your operating system uses a fuckton of assembly routines that are being invoked through C for a variety of reasons. Modern architectures provide special-purpose registers, opcodes, and hardware to facilitate many tasks for the operating system. You cannot access a TLB, you cannot do things such as switch the usermode of the processor, you cannot push and pop registers, and perform other low-level tasks in C. Many times, things such as cache misses and page faults raise hardware interrupts that are handled in assembly languages.

While assembly might not have much of a place in the computer science end of the computing spectrum these days, there's an entire engineering arena that demands its use for a software/hardware interface.

int main ( int argc,char *args[] ) {

	asm("Some assembly shit");

return 0;
}

MadPumpkin wrote:Assembly=Masochism
For more information see mv2112's above post :P. I can honestly only think of one game that was written in assembly. I do realize that plenty were made in assembly in the stone era, but I can only THINK of one. Which is Sonic. I thought it was pretty amazing that a game with that much math could run on a Genesis, till I found out it was in assembly :P. But if you want to know more about it read up on it, it's pretty interesting stuff. Trying to make any sort of graphical software with it is what I like to describe as "submitting your brain to torture". People of course will argue, but even they will tell you how much easier it is and a better idea to write with C\++\#, Python or anything else for that matter.

N64vSNES wrote:I could be wrong but you can use a assembly directly from C/++ code can you not?

for example

Code: Select all

int main ( int argc,char *args[] ) {

	asm("Some assembly shit");

return 0;
}

I guess the is still limits here?

gamenovice wrote: so what im getting from here is that assembly by now is mainly good for allowing your engine to access registers of hardware devices. basically in theory if you can do this successsfully, you could completely control your console? please tell me if i am accurate or not, as i am still trying to understand the ins and outs of this language(i know, is should know alot more by now, but im still a noob)

EDIT:
but i can obviously infer that the major uses of it have been replaced by modern compilers, thank god!

register unsigned int x = 44; 

mov bx, 44

unsigned int x = 44;

mov bx, 44