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Date:	Thu, 31 Jul 2003 17:24:58 PDT7
From:	"Lynn H. Maxson" <lmaxson@pacbell.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	< "scoug-programming@scoug.com" > scoug-programming@scoug.com >
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Re: Warpstock 2003 Presentation

Content Type: text/plain

"That's easy. Write it your way."

Steven,

It's too bad you can't offer this advice to Peter as he
continues his adventures with Relish (no pun intended). The
attitude implicit in this separates the strictly open source user
from those who opt also to contribute. We could use more
assistance from you easing the transition from user only to
user and contributor.

I appreciate your pre-testing of IBM's and Watcom's ALP. I
want to avoid just blindly assembling code which works
without my having a reasonable understanding of why. It's
presenting that understanding. I have a three-book set from
Scott Foresman publishing which I have managed to not lose
somehow: (1) "Zen of Assembly Language" (Michael Abrash),
(2) "Assembly Language from Square One" (Jeff Duntemann),
and (3) "Assembly Language Magic" (William Murray/Chris
Pappas). Abrash upgraded his book in the "Zen of Graphics
Programming". Then I have managed to collect a number of
others going all the way back to the original 8088-based PC.

Nevertheless except for some initial effort using Abrash's "Zen
of Assembly Language" I have actually avoided assembly
language. Now faced with presenting something more
substantial than a surface treatment with writing device
drivers for OS/2, I'm putting myself on something of a crash
course on assembly language.

As Intel offers an HLL version of every Pentium instruction I
have an interest in incorporating same as part of a
specification language, eliminating the need to separately
learn and write symbolic assembly language. I have a second
interest in determining the reasons, if any, that an assembly
language programmer can more efficient code than possible
within the code generation phase of an HLL.

It all gets back to having a software tool do what you want it
to do in the most efficient and effective way possible. You
have Michael Abrash in his "Zen of Assembly Language" going
through the process of understanding the architecture of a
processor relative to its instruction set, determining for a
given function the most efficient set of instructions in terms of
performance, and then once determined incorporating that
within the code generation phase of an HLL.

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