Quote:
Originally posted by gizmo
... I've yet to encounter a programming language that I wasn't able to pick up in the space of one to two weeks. Often, I spend more time fighting the quirks of the support package and compiler than I do the language (for example, it took me almost two MONTHS to get even PASSINGLY familiar with all of the crap in Borland's Object Windows Library or the Microsoft Foundation Classes... |
I'm not going to argue with you at that point Gizmo, for I believe and can see, that you verily speak the truth. The, 'crap in Borland's Object Windows Library', or as you say,'or the Microsoft Foundation Classes' is indeed a hassle to assimilate.
The previous post was elucidating, and a good tale of ASM from a 1st hand perspective. I belive your opinion of compiler optimisations sheds some light on the usual 'coding in assembler is obsolete because modern compilers produce as optimised code as the average ASM programer' argument.
However going back to the point illustrated by the quote above, its comparing apples to oranges to say that because it has no 'logical layer' akin to the one that has to be covered before you can feel 'at home' with an OOP language or another high level dev tool that asm is quicker to learn. We must not get trapped into arguing over terminology. When I speak of learning a [formal computer]language I do not consider knowing the set of reserved words or instructions sufficient. I mean the point where the knowledge aquired permits the user to write apt solutions to problems which are well defined and perhaps at some reasonable rate correcting a reasonable amount of errors as he goes along. I think you have to agree it would take more than a couple of weeks for a learner to have got his head around the intricacies and idiosynchracies of the particular architecture he was working on before he had actually mastered the use of a particular ASM.
Then again my experience of ASM is v. small. I am arriving at this conclusion from fundamental understanding of Computer Science rather than personal findings.
It would be great to get your thoughts on this.