English Amiga Board - View Single Post - Is programming now much different than during the Amiga Era

Maccara · 05 July 2010, 12:18

I'm with NovaCoder! Much easier to find the info you need when you need it.

It's nice you don't have to go asm everytime you want even a bit of performance nowadays - just throw more hardware at it. Saves my time as a coder, which means more money.

That isn't saying asm isn't still very useful. Often needed to squeeze out the last bit of performance in en/decoders, for example. Compilers are still stupid (and will be for long, AI needed) and can't do autovectorization etc well. VC often screws even intrinsics (problematic register allocator), so even those aren't too useful. GCC needs a lot of coaching too to do the right thing.

Wouldn't bother to write a whole program in asm in any situation today, though. And shouldn't be used for optimization either until other options are exhausted first (algorithmic improvements etc). Should stay HLL as long as possible during development cycle.

05 July 2010, 12:18	#40
Maccara The Spanish Songstress Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: Finland Posts: 114	I'm with NovaCoder! Much easier to find the info you need when you need it. It's nice you don't have to go asm everytime you want even a bit of performance nowadays - just throw more hardware at it. Saves my time as a coder, which means more money. That isn't saying asm isn't still very useful. Often needed to squeeze out the last bit of performance in en/decoders, for example. Compilers are still stupid (and will be for long, AI needed) and can't do autovectorization etc well. VC often screws even intrinsics (problematic register allocator), so even those aren't too useful. GCC needs a lot of coaching too to do the right thing. Wouldn't bother to write a whole program in asm in any situation today, though. And shouldn't be used for optimization either until other options are exhausted first (algorithmic improvements etc). Should stay HLL as long as possible during development cycle.