[Tfug] OS written in Assembly

[Bexley Hall]

--- On Wed, 8/19/09, bpoag at comcast.net <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:

> A nice thought, but..
> 
> Compilers surpassed humans in terms of code efficiency a
> couple decades ago. I love assembly, but, there's a
> point where it doesn't make sense.

While I agree "in the large" -- maintaining a "significant"
piece of assembly language code is a *horrendous* undertaking
(been there, done that, have the T-shirt and the SCARS to 
prove it!) -- there still are niches where compilers just
can't compete.  E.g., write a boot loader in a few *dozen*
bytes, convert LORAN coordinates to lat-lon with a few
*hundred* bytes of RAM at your disposal, etc.  :-/

OTOH, I kick and scream when I am forced (by circumstances)
to write something in ASM nowadays.  Its just too damn tedious.

OTOOH, I think those of us that grew up with ASM have a much
easier time dealing with concepts like pointers and *exploiting*
those concepts (e.g., pointers to functions that return pointers
to functions, etc.)