In today's age of programming Assembly Language is considered a lost art as many programmers don't know about Assembly Language and even if they do often don't remember how to use it. However Assembly Language is used by all programs as all programs have to be translated into Assembly Language before it is processed by the CPU.
So as far as coding goes where does Assembly Language fit in?
Often Assembly Language can be used for this primary reason optimization as Assembly Language offers many options to improve the performance of a program as with an Assembly Language code the benefit is now more direct instruction to the CPU as supposed to having the compiler transfer the program into Assembly Language to be processed by the CPU. With assembly language there is also the advantage of using instructions only available at the Assembly Language level such as special CPU specific register instructions, execution speed optimization based on CPU resources such as using all the clocks available to the CPU, and even optimizing for memory size could be better at this level as its direct instruction with the CPU. The biggest challenge is error handling is more in the hands of the developer, variable and function naming require more work to define which is more tailored towards experienced developers.
If optimization for Assembly Language is a option why isn't it used more and what is the best approach?
Often the top approach for using Assembly Language for optimization is Inline Assembly as Inline Assembly is available for a variety of programming languages but most popular with C++ as their are more specific tools to blend inline assembly with the language of C++ than most languages. However these techniques are not often used because most programmers actually don't know about these concepts, noted concerns about programmability due to lack of experience with Assembly Language which are often inaccurate, or assume that coding within their core language alone is the only option even though Assembly Language can provide very unique optimizations due to operating at the instruction level.
How valuable is having programming concepts such as inline Assembly Language and standalone Assembly?
Very valuable as only 5% or less developers can't even use Assembly Language coding due to lack of knowledge on the subject. Even if they do have the knowledge good chances are they don't know how to use Assembly Language to optimize today's programs as they probably used it too long ago and don't know the current awareness of it's value as inline assembly can help cut down execution times for sections of programs made at a high level and can be used to complete special tasks that might be less practical using intrinsic functions or vectors for optimization as while they are good tools for code optimizing they can still require more lines of code to execute especially at the instruction level and make your code less readable despite the benefits of the intrinsic functions and vector solutions.
What about writing a full program in Assembly Language?
Coding Assembly Language as an entire program is considered less practical as higher languages such as C++ and Python could reduce the amount of coding input to create a program. However writing an entire program in Assembly Language can offer almost full control of how a program executes since it would be made at the instruction level. Although I think in theory using full blown Assembly Language for Network Programming for applications can be very effective as Network Applications often run into unexpected problems due to running on a network or due to server issues. With Assembly Language this could possibly be used to avoid various network issues due to bit by bit instruction control and could be great at handling memory errors as well due to direct access to CPU memory callstacks.
Overall Assembly Language coding is a good skill to have as it allows the rarest of modifications and optimizations for almost any program and if known can put you on a small list of developers who can complete such tasks that require Assembly Language programming.
Comments