MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-09-02 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Assembly
|
So can you give a class on ASM
I'd pay for it
Ruben
On Thu, Sep 02, 2004 at 12:25:58AM -0400, Billy wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 01, 2004 at 07:06:44PM -0400, Steve Milo wrote:
> > So basically this all means that I am going to have to suck it up and
> > tough it out.
>
> > Strangely, the Sun Admins sentiments, when I asked him who
> > else uses assembly language besides in academia were 'no one'.
>
> I strongly suspect that he doesn't know what he's talking about. On the
> sysadmin end, security researchers work in assembly (and disassembly)
> *ALL THE TIME*. In the normal "PeeCee" application/OS kernel style of
> programming, you CANNOT get maximum performance for your number
> crunching, video codecs, etc. using vanilla C code. Search the Linux
> kernel sometime. It's loaded with asm. You HAVE to use some extra ASM
> to optimize the coprocessors and caches and pipelines other exotics. C
> is flexible, scalable, and portable, but it's very rarely making the
> best use of the CPU for that dark corner of the room occupied by
> specialized programs or specialized hardware.
>
> There's a LOT of stuff that just cannot be expressed in C, because it
> has no idea what machine it's running on. You're going to have to
> understand what's REALLY going on to be a good programmer. You can
> DRIVE the car with C, but you can't repair it or even tune it up.
>
> Several sysadmins I know tend to be too dismissive of tech they don't
> use. I don't know what it is about them. Maybe it's an ignorant
> personality type that leads people into sysadminning.
>
> > I said well what about embedded devices, 'thats all done in C' was his
> > reply.
>
> Don't listen to him. He doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
> This is understandable because he's a sysadmin, and not an EE.
>
> I *do* embedded devices, and I can tell you that there is no C without
> asm. C is compiled into asm, and sometimes it is compiled into into
> malfunctioning asm. Embedded folks have to deal with moving-target CPUs
> for which the port of the C compiler isn't very mature, and that means
> rolling up your sleeve, debugging in assembly, and even hunting down and
> sidestepping/killing the compiler bugs which produced the bad asm in the
> first place. Can you guess how far you'll get in this endeavor without
> being able to at least read the asm?
>
> > Some how I find it hard to believe that even though 'C' is the standard
> > programming language in many things assembly has been forgotten about.
>
> Your intuition serves you well.... assembly code hasn't and cannot be
> forgotten about. As long as CPUs evolve, we'll have to think of ways
> to write efficient code for them. It's impossible for a higher-level
> language to expose the full power of a CPU the way native assembly can.
>
> So we use LOTS and LOTS of C, with a LITTLE BIT of asm for the weird
> CPU-specific stuff to get some cool functionality or a tight little
> code speedup here and there. A lot of the asm code I've seen in the
> field is expressed as 'asm' statements in C code.
>
> ____________________________
> NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
> Fair Use -
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> NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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