NYCPHP Meetup

[Jay Lozier]

On 01/24/2012 03:08 PM, Leam Hall wrote:
> On 01/24/2012 02:52 PM, Justin Dearing wrote:
>
>> I  was going to make an argument that assembly might not be needed at 
>> the
>> associates level, but writing this has made me question that myself.
>> However, I think its more important to be able to read assembly than 
>> write
>> assembly, so maybe it should be taught that way. One or two lessons 
>> where
>> you write some stuff to appreciate the syntax, and the rest would be
>> "compile this code, step through the assembly" Seeing different calling
>> conventions in action will probably teach students a lot, and 
>> honestly I'd
>> probably audit a course taught that way.
>>
>> Justin
>
> Randall Hyde of "The Art of Assembly" book fame posits that 
> programmers who learn the machines and how things work, through 
> Assembly programming, are more able to write performant code.
>
> I don't know enough to confirm or deny that theory, but it stuck with me.
Neither do I, but what little I know of assembly programming is one you 
are programming closer to machine language and two your actually 
implementing for example a for loop in much gorier detail. Both require 
one to pay more attention to the details of what and how one codes.

Also, many claim assembly code can be optimized for performance. How 
important is this today for most applications may be debatable.
>
> Leam
>
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-- 
Jay Lozier
jslozier at gmail.com