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From: blarson@castor.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.edu,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Teaching Assembler on VAX (BSD 4.3)
Message-ID: <2242@castor.usc.edu>
Date: Mon, 18-May-87 03:07:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: castor.2242
Posted: Mon May 18 03:07:27 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 18-May-87 06:42:05 EDT
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Reply-To: blarson@castor.usc.edu.UUCP (Bob Larson)
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In article <27848@rochester.ARPA> ken@rochester.UUCP (Ken Yap) writes:
>Frankly I think teaching more than a smattering of assembler is a
>WOMBAT (waste of money, brains and time).  It should only be necessary
>for that 1% of bit-twiddling that needs speed or needs to use a special
>instruction.  Or to read generated code, if you write compilers.

Reading generated code is useful for tracking bugs (both compiler and
user) and undocumented compiler features down also.  (The latter I do
use on a compiler I have NO documentation on.  (It is NOT an illegal
copy.))  I've even found that reading a dissasebled listing of
something written in assembly can help track down inefficancies.  (The
assembler in question made pessimistic assumptions about relitive
addresses.)
-- 
Bob Larson
Arpa: Blarson@Usc-Ecl.Arpa
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