Trees Fall Prey to AoA

bluethundr writes "For all of the years that it has been available, the only way to read the classic instructional text known as the Art of Assembly by Randy Hyde, was to read it online or download a PDF'd copy and print it out for your own bad sef. It would seem that No Starch Press stands poised to release a pre-bound (aka BOOK) version of this most highly esteemed volumes on the arcane topic on highly convenient dead tree media. I for one am very glad about this development. While I recognize the value of hypertext for reference, when it comes to learning any complex topic at length dead tree media is the way to go, hands down IMHO! I emailed the company to get a bead on when to expect this development and this was the reply: 'No, you are not misinformed. The scheduled publication date for Art of Assembly is March, 2003. I will have something posted on the website very soon, perhaps in the next couple of days. Thanks for the interest!'"

Comments

ASM can do things HLL can not.

[AHumbleOpinion]

There's nothing a higher language cannot do that assembler can

As the AoA author would probably say, you are "severely misinformed". Example, an efficient fixed point multiply, say 16.16. For those unfamiliar with x86 assembly we have two 32-bit operands and the x86 cpu kindly generates a 64-bit result. The assembly language programmer can shift this 64-bit result to obtain a properly scaled fixed point result. It takes one extra instruction over a normal multiply. Doing it all in a HLL is troublesome, using 32-bit types imposes severe restrictions on inputs to avoid overflowing 32-bits, using 64-bit types usually results in grossly inefficient code, often library calls for 64-bit operations. Just one example off of the top of my head. There are many others.

Also, the whole notion that compilers can do as well as humans is naive. Currently compilers are only good when you have novice assembly language programmers. Experienced assembly language programmers often get significant improvements of compilers.

None of this should be interpreted to mean that people should use assembly language more often. They should not:

1. Optimizing algorithms and data access is likely to be far more fruitful. Assembly should only be used after these areas are thoroughly exhausted.

2. They would be assembly programmer is probably not experienced enough and will generate poor code.