Posted by indyjo 10/23/2025
I will wait for when efficiency (as well as speed) comes from elegance in the programming language itself rather than the human mind having to cater to some fundamental archaic syntax.
Value goes into register, do some math on register, compare register to immediate, etc.
The difficulty comes the more code you add. The same thing happens in nearly any language. A single file python script is easy, the complexity in a mature async python app is hard. It's easy to add some numbers and val >> stout in c++, but managing all the dependencies and build chain is hard in a million line program.
It's no different, but assembly is neat because you can isolate the complexity via inlining and just step back and tell the computer exactly what to do.
That's a self-defeating attitude which you don't want to reinforce :-(
Assembly is not difficult but writing large-scale programs/systems in it is. But almost nobody does this nowadays; it is generally C & Assembly. So you need to know/understand just enough assembly to get along.
Start with Jonathan Bartlett's Programming from the Ground Up for a nice introduction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11702025 Then look at Daniel Kusswurm's and Larry Pyeatt's books. Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45782206
Bare metal programming with those old CPUs is WAY easier than learning new web stack IMO.
My straight Javascript implementation: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/Mooncraft2000