Non-game programming - what does that leave me with?

[phx]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

And also, ASM has a tougher learning curve than both of the others

I even think that assembler is the easiest programming language. You have to learn a few instructions and addressing modes and you're done. The syntax of C is much more complex.

The problem of programming in assembler is that you need to write a lot of code for small tasks and that it is not as readable as a structured languages like C, when you look into it at a later point.

So, when performance is not the most important aspect of your program, or when the program is becoming more complex, I would always prefer C. You can still insert sub-routines in asssembler, when needed.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

May be a good compiler, but it still lacks an IDE. Like for doing things such as source-level debugging, setting breakpoints in the editor, you see...

Does that matter? You use PhxAss, doesn't have an IDE either

Originally Posted by meynaf

Old school BASIC dialects were interpreted and ran on very slow machines.

Even more reason to avoid them like the plague.

Originally Posted by meynaf

However, try to do basic graphics on these dialects : it was damned easy.

Sure, now try to write anything substantial properly. You can't.

Originally Posted by phx

You have to learn a few instructions and addressing modes and you're done.

And then comes the hard part: Figuring out how to use them properly.

[Samurai_Crow]

Speaking of inline assembly, the user-mode assembly instruction set is implemented in Blitz Basic and AmigaE so that using an external assembler is unnecessary. C has yet to match that functionality.

Also, somebody like the original poster who is familiar with Java already, would benefit from the ability to make VTables without having to hand-roll them to get OOP functionality.

I wish ANSI/ISO C 2011 (aka C11) was more available. It has type-sensitive generic macro definitions that make the preprocessor actually flexible enough to use for powerful stuff! Kind of like generics on Java or templates on C++!

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yes, but it's better at it than BASIC is. And also, ASM has a tougher learning curve than both of the others, so if I was to use ASM it would never have been made. Also, I never wanted to play my MP3s at 22kHz in mono, that to me isn't worth bothering with.

So what is your MP3 stuff for ? Not real time play on an Amiga, i guess.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Of course hand-coded ASM makes the tightest, most efficient code - if you're a good programmer, but more often than not there's a compromise to be made between code efficiency and ease of development. ASM will only ever be easier than C or BASIC if you're absolutely proficient at ASM and haven't a clue about the others. Otherwise it's an exercise in frustration for what is realistically very limited benefit in many cases, and is very likely to put you off programming altogether.

Nah, it's not an exercise in frustration if done properly - the exercise in frustration actually is C for me.
Asm may be more difficult to learn but it's worth - especially because this knowledge helps writing better code in other languages.
I have made enough BASIC and C to be able to compare all three ; in Asm you do things yourself so it's always done your way. On the other hand you may find things difficult in other languages as they have their limits - the more i used them, the more i ran into these limits.
Want to enter a function at another point than the start ? You can't (old basics could, ok). Want a dynamic area allocated in the stack ? You can't - must be of static size. Want to return to another point in the call stack ? You can, but it's cumbersome while in asm it's very easy. Want to turn the callee into the caller ? You can't. Want to compute stuff directly on bytes and words ? You can't. Want to make a pointer on a label for a future goto ? You can't. Want to use bit fields ? You never know in which direction they will be allocated. Want to express a number in binary in your source ? You can't (or tell me how). Want to detect arithmetic overflow ? It's just an horror to do. Want to do macros with conditional assembly ? You can't.
And so on, the list is very long. Only Asm provides full freedom.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Nah, it's not an exercise in frustration if done properly

For some it is.

Originally Posted by meynaf

but it's worth

There are people who strongly disagree with this. They'll tell you that it's impossible to write big programs in assembly language, and they'll also tell you that you'll often write better code in C. As you know, I'm not one of them.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by phx

The problem of programming in assembler is that you need to write a lot of code for small tasks and that it is not as readable as a structured languages like C, when you look into it at a later point.

Asm may be very readable - try using the semicolon more often
Sometimes i had to read the asm to understand what a small C block really did - C can be very unreadable sometimes.
And yes you need to write quite some code - but once it is written you can reuse it. I can open an Intuition screen and do some graphics on it in five minutes in asm.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Does that matter? You use PhxAss, doesn't have an IDE either

Matters more in C than in ASM. In ASM any debugger will show you instructions as they are - in C you need source level debugging for the same clarity.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Even more reason to avoid them like the plague.

Maybe. But as a school of programming they're still the best.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Sure, now try to write anything substantial properly. You can't.

Writing bloatware is not their goal

Originally Posted by Thorham

And then comes the hard part: Figuring out how to use them properly.

Has never been a problem for me.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

For some it is.

Everything is difficult when one doesn't know it properly and doesn't want to learn.

Originally Posted by Thorham

There are people who strongly disagree with this. They'll tell you that it's impossible to write big programs in assembly language, and they'll also tell you that you'll often write better code in C. As you know, I'm not one of them.

Well, if wasting 75% cpu power is not a problem, maybe C is good.
But better code, certainly not. I've disassembled too many compiled horrors in my life to eat this - and the compiler wasn't necessarily the culprit !

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by meynaf

I have made enough BASIC and C to be able to compare all three ; in Asm you do things yourself so it's always done your way.

How is that a merit of machine languages exactly?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Want to enter a function at another point than the start ? You can't (old basics could, ok).
Want to return to another point in the call stack ? You can, but it's cumbersome while in asm it's very easy.
Want to make a pointer on a label for a future goto ? You can't.
Want to use bit fields ? You never know in which direction they will be allocated.

Why would you need to? Odd and curious usage cases.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Want a dynamic area allocated in the stack ? You can't - must be of static size.

Variable-length arrays were introduced in C99.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Want to turn the callee into the caller ? You can't.
Want to compute stuff directly on bytes and words ? You can't.
Want to do macros with conditional assembly ? You can't.

What do you mean?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Want to detect arithmetic overflow ? It's just an horror to do.
Want to express a number in binary in your source ? You can't (or tell me how).

Both can be done, and some compilers do support a 0b prefix for binary literals. Hardly something that will stop the development of any software.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Nah, it's not an exercise in frustration if done properly - the exercise in frustration actually is C for me.
Sometimes i had to read the asm to understand what a small C block really did - C can be very unreadable sometimes.

See this quote:

Originally Posted by meynaf

Everything is difficult when one doesn't know it properly and doesn't want to learn.

[ppcamiga1]

vbcc is outdated and not worth to use.
Maybe it generate fast code, but only because it suport very basic subset of C.

gcc crosscompiler - gcc 3.4.0 You may found at:

http://kas1e.mikendezign.com/zeroher...piler_os3.html

If You want to use c++ on amiga gcc is best choice.
Other c++ compilers are very old and outdated.

[TenLeftFingers]

We studied the 68000 in college. Little did my tiny brain know that the same processor was inside my A600 - I'd have paid far more attention had I known!

This thread is making me want to write a small app in all languages now just to compare and contrast. Maybe an BBC news ticker? It could be expanded to do general RSS later.

Just to throw some petrol on the conversation, here's an operating system written in ASM http://kolibrios.org/en/

[Daedalus]

Wow... Look, this is all getting way out of hand. I too have programmed in all three, although I admit I haven't programmed much Assembly on the Amiga. For the meager benefits it gave me, I soon switched back to C and BASIC. Being able to type 10 lines of code and have a fully working GUI wins over ASM every time for me. My time for hobby programming is limited, and the time and effort it takes to program something in ASM means that I simply wouldn't bother at all.

For what it's worth, my MP3 decoder can decode 192kbps 44.1kHz stereo in realtime on an 060. Playing rubbish quality 22kHz mono music "just because" isn't anywhere on my to-do list. But anyway, that's not what it's for. Its main purpose is a general-purpose engine mainly for use with mhi.library for hardware decoding and the software engine is only provided for powerful enough Amigas - 060, emulation or nextgen.

Yes, of course ASM gives full freedom, but just because you have some above average skills in keeping track of everything all your ASM projects are doing doesn't mean us mere mortals should do things that way too. I see that freedom as living your life without using transport. Sure, you can get anywhere for free given enough time and dedication, but despite the cost, I'm much happier getting a train or driving, and I go places I would never go if I had to walk.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Leffmann

How is that a merit of machine languages exactly?

If you don't like freedom, it's indeed not a merit.

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Why would you need to? Odd and curious usage cases.

When enough code is made, odd and curious usage cases start to appear.

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Variable-length arrays were introduced in C99.

Not many Amiga compilers support C99...

Originally Posted by Leffmann

What do you mean?

What's hard to understand there ?

Originally Posted by Leffmann

Both can be done, and some compilers do support a 0b prefix for binary literals. Hardly something that will stop the development of any software.

They're just little details that add to the whole mess.

Originally Posted by Leffmann

See this quote:

I know C better than that. Actually at start i liked it, seemed good. But the more i used it, the more i ran into its limits.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Wow... Look, this is all getting way out of hand. I too have programmed in all three, although I admit I haven't programmed much Assembly on the Amiga. For the meager benefits it gave me, I soon switched back to C and BASIC. Being able to type 10 lines of code and have a fully working GUI wins over ASM every time for me. My time for hobby programming is limited, and the time and effort it takes to program something in ASM means that I simply wouldn't bother at all.

In ASM you can have your fully working GUI with just 10 lines of code too (and for C i want to see these 10 lines !).
You only have to do the full GUI stuff once, then you reuse.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

For what it's worth, my MP3 decoder can decode 192kbps 44.1kHz stereo in realtime on an 060. Playing rubbish quality 22kHz mono music "just because" isn't anywhere on my to-do list. But anyway, that's not what it's for. Its main purpose is a general-purpose engine mainly for use with mhi.library for hardware decoding and the software engine is only provided for powerful enough Amigas - 060, emulation or nextgen.

Reusable code exists for MP3 decoding that you could use. I don't see the point in writing yours if it's as slow as everyone else.
22kHz mono isn't exactly rubbish quality - and better play rubbish than not play at all. All streams can play in realtime on a 030, even 320kbps.
Of course the same code on a 060 doesn't need to halve frequency and plays anything real time...

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yes, of course ASM gives full freedom, but just because you have some above average skills in keeping track of everything all your ASM projects are doing doesn't mean us mere mortals should do things that way too. I see that freedom as living your life without using transport. Sure, you can get anywhere for free given enough time and dedication, but despite the cost, I'm much happier getting a train or driving, and I go places I would never go if I had to walk.

Seems the belief against ASM is very very strong...

Perhaps we should write some example program in all languages and compare ?

[Daedalus]

Well, it seems the belief against freedom of choice is very very strong too...

It's not about belief, it's about my personal experience. C and BASIC both give me results that I couldn't get with ASM. Simple as that. Why is that so difficult to understand? There are more important things in life than having the "purest", most "free" code, like having the time and motivation to actually produce something.

Yep, fully aware of reusable code, as I said my aim was to use mhi.library anyway so it was more a personal exercise to see if I could do it. But do you see how your ideas are so skewed there? You've no problem listening to poor quality music but you hate the idea of a few wasted CPU cycles. It seems that you get an idea in your head and refuse to accept there is any other way.

I'm delighted you are so proficient with ASM that you can out-code everyone else. I don't know how much ASM software you've written, but I can only imagine everyone must be using your work at this stage. Perhaps we will all benefit from this when you write alternative versions of software that's out there, and suddenly have all these extra CPU cycles to spare. If you're looking for a project to prove your skills, try writing a native version of SMBFS that fully implements the SMB2 protocol. I'll actually pay good money for that!

I'm not particularly interested in a simple program comparison; BASIC will always win with the fewest lines required, ASM will always win with the most efficient code. I simply think you're being ridiculous by refusing to acknowledge that there are many advantages to other languages that make them more suited to certain tasks. For me, ease of development is far more important, and the more complex a project gets, the larger the gap in ease of development is between the languages, and that means that ASM is completely unsuitable for me.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Well, it seems the belief against freedom of choice is very very strong too...

I don't deny you your freedom of choice.
It's just that i don't want to see wrong things being said about ASM.

If you just write that you prefer language A or B, no problem.
But if you say ASM is more difficult to write, unreadable, or ill-suited for some tasks then you may eventually see me coming.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

It's not about belief, it's about my personal experience. C and BASIC both give me results that I couldn't get with ASM. Simple as that. Why is that so difficult to understand? There are more important things in life than having the "purest", most "free" code, like having the time and motivation to actually produce something.

If it's just your personal experience, then you can accept other people might have a different personal experience.
If YOU can not get something in ASM, it doesn't imply that ASM is unsuitable for the task - it's just that you can't do it, like you can't pilot a helicopter and prefer using your car.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yep, fully aware of reusable code, as I said my aim was to use mhi.library anyway so it was more a personal exercise to see if I could do it. But do you see how your ideas are so skewed there? You've no problem listening to poor quality music but you hate the idea of a few wasted CPU cycles. It seems that you get an idea in your head and refuse to accept there is any other way.

No skewed ideas there. It's NOT that i don't see a problem listening to poor quality music, the problem is rather that listening with a lowered quality (and i'm not sure you would actually hear the difference !) is better than not being able to listen to it at all.
And for doing this on a "slow" machine, guess what's needed. If your lib can't play more than 192kbps and puts a 060 to its knee, where my code can play up to 320kbps and leaves 50% cpu free, then there's perhaps something wrong with your code.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I'm delighted you are so proficient with ASM that you can out-code everyone else. I don't know how much ASM software you've written, but I can only imagine everyone must be using your work at this stage. Perhaps we will all benefit from this when you write alternative versions of software that's out there, and suddenly have all these extra CPU cycles to spare. If you're looking for a project to prove your skills, try writing a native version of SMBFS that fully implements the SMB2 protocol. I'll actually pay good money for that!

Perhaps you know that I did a few Atari ST to Amiga game conversions.
And also a Mac to Amiga game conversion.
This is only possible with ASM. Period.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

I'm not particularly interested in a simple program comparison; BASIC will always win with the fewest lines required, ASM will always win with the most efficient code. I simply think you're being ridiculous by refusing to acknowledge that there are many advantages to other languages that make them more suited to certain tasks. For me, ease of development is far more important, and the more complex a project gets, the larger the gap in ease of development is between the languages, and that means that ASM is completely unsuitable for me.

It's not that i refuse acknowledging that other languages may have advantages.
It's that i refuse the position where ease of development is necessarily poor for ASM.
It's that other people usually refuse to acknowledge that their fave language has inherent flaws which can make them sometimes annoying to use.

[meynaf]

To fix misunderstandings.

I'm not telling anyone that they must use asm.

The problem is that most people are saying that asm is inherently complicated, that it takes ages and many lines for just a simple project, that serious coding with it is just not possible, and so on. But all that (for 68k asm) is simply not true - or it's not true for everyone.
If I can do something in another language (whichever) then i can also do it in asm.
Asm is a different way of thinking.

[Daedalus]

Okay, take it as meant this way: ASM is unsuitable for me because the length of time and effort required to do the same in ASM means my project would not have been possible. I've no doubt you could easily have written InstallerGen in ASM for example quicker than I did in BASIC, and that the reaction times of the gadgets would've been milliseconds faster as a result. But if I had started the project in ASM it wouldn't have ever been finished, and that's why ASM was unsuitable. To re-use your point about poor quality music being better than none, I would say it's better to have casual coders writing applications in C or BASIC than not writing anything. Bottom line is that unless you're very dedicated, ASM does appear more complicated, does require more lines and does require more time to code with. If it didn't, everyone would always use ASM for everything. So why don't they? Just because you and a small number of others are excellent at it, doesn't mean you're in a majority. Amongst the many coders I know, you're a distinct minority and it's important that you realise that.

Of course everything's possible in ASM, I never said it wasn't. It's just a tradeoff as to whether it's worthwhile for the benefits that may or may not be important to the finished article.

[meynaf]

Then ok, we can agree (mostly).

But beware of arguments such as :

Originally Posted by Daedalus

If it didn't, everyone would always use ASM for everything. So why don't they?

This is called argumentum ad populum. IOW the fact many people choose something, doesn't mean it's the right choice.
Everyone usually don't take the easiest path (or else why is so many people using Java ? ).

Another thing.
People who know asm are normally better programmers at other languages because they know what lies behind. Something to take into account, i think.
So the tradeoff may be a longterm one, but it really pays off.

[demolition]

Even when using higher level languages, it is always good to be able to understand what happens at the lower levels when you do something in your preferred language.

When I do some time-critical stuff in C/C++, I often check the ASM output from the compiler to see if it looks reasonable. Sometimes even a small change in your C code, although still functionally identical, can make a big performance difference in the output. This could be things like reorganising loops or making the scope on variables smaller. Another example is that using if instead of the ternary operator ? could be faster. If you do not check the Asm output, you might not realize this.

What I have seen is that sometimes the compiler runs out of CPU registers so it uses the stack extensively inside your inner loop, but with some small modifications, you can sometimes avoid this behaviour completely.

The compiler does not know your intentions with the code, so knowing about the underlying structure and Asm is very useful even if you never write Asm directly. Eventually you learn how best to write your high level code to suit the compiler you are using.

[Daedalus]

I understand it's a hollow argument, it's a little different from many people choosing one thing though since they're choosing many other options instead. Programmers will choose what they see as the best tools for the job, and that will depend on the project, time constraints, their abilities and their preference. They don't all choose C, and they don't all choose Java (thankfully).

For the record, I do know ASM, I just don't have your level of proficiency. Most of my programming for my job is done writing firmware which is usually either C or AVR, or occasionally 6809. That's the experience I'm basing my arguments on - I know first-hand that I can achieve far more with a higher-level language than a lower-level one, so I'll opt for the higher-level one when it suits and only use ASM for code that needs cycle-exact timing or extremely limited RAM or flash use. And why I mostly use BASIC for my hobby programming.

I agree that it's good to check and understand compiler output, but that's a whole different thing to writing the entire assembly from scratch.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Programmers will choose what they see as the best tools for the job, and that will depend on the project, time constraints, their abilities and their preference.

Absolutely. That's the point.

I understand Meynaf. The M68k is such a nice CPU and it makes so much fun to code for it, but sometimes you just need to get your GUI done. Or just some conversion tool you need, or something very complex and/or portable.

For example I wrote the game Solid Gold in pure 68k assembler (because it's a game and because it's fun), but the tools for converting WAVs and BMPs, or compressing files, were best written in C. This also allowed cross development, as the tools ran on every host system.