Re: A86: Re: Re: Assembly

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Re: A86: Re: Re: Assembly




On Wed, 21 Apr 1999 17:08:06 -0400 Aaron Curtis <acurti1@umbc.edu>
writes:
>
>Say it Dave!  I hardly ever used rom calls until I started 
>disassembling
>them...

me neither, but that's mostly cuz no one else knew how to use them :)

>> If you can't write the code, you should't use it.  I'm a firm 

could you write a 32-bit multitasking operating system?  a java
interpreter for every platform?  bios code to talk to the hard drive
controller?  how many people have to write programs that use these even
though they couldn't write them?

could you even write your own version of delvar that would update the
correct pointers everywhere?  (ok, not as hard, but i'd still be
impressed)

>> 3D program.  Same way with asm, or anything else.  If you couldn't 
>write the
>> same FUNCTIONAL code, then you shouldn't use it, either.

boy, if what you're saying is true then c++ is doomed to failure.  the
whole point is that you don't need to know what's going on "under the
hood."  yeah, if you're using a linked list, it's good to understand how
it works but you don't have to be able to write floating point math
routines in order to use them.

>> Btw, I use very few rom calls.  People like to use them a whole 
>lot.
>> They're fine for normal programs, but if it's a game, I prefer to 
>write them
>> myselfm because they're a heck of a lot faster and because I can.  

this is true.  rom calls should be used if you're optimizing for size
instead of speed.

>> If you don't know asm, you aren't going to be able to write a 
>compiler.  Not

actually, that sounds like a good way to learn asm to me...  you'd
hopefully get good enough to realize why no one else's done it yet.

>> software quality.  Sure, there's quality.  Load up VC++, push a few 
>buttons
>> and you have a full featured text editor.  Darn, that took a lot of 
>effort.
>> And do you know it works?  No.  Do you know why?  Of course you 
>don't.  All

that's only a starting point.  try getting something other than that and
you get your challenge.  sure, it's not as much of a challenge as writing
the whole thing in asm, but could you imagine writing something like
netscape entirely in asm?!!??!  (imho, visual basic is a much greater
evil than vc++)

>> it's full of worthless, slow, buggy crap.
it's harder to find needles in larger haystacks.

>> Now, you have a almost-perfectly designed Z80 machine with 128k ram 
i wish you could swap ram into the first 16k block...

>> full host of development tools, emulators and documentation, 
>allowing you to
>> easily and fully enjoy programming it in assembly, and you want to 
>go and
>> screw it up by writing a compiler?

you use assembly studio, right?

actually, it seems to me what these people want is to have a basic
compiler, not tweaked-out asm.  that would keep things less confusing cuz
you wouldn't have a bunch of people thinking they could program in asm
when they couldn't.

-josh


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