Is it worth learning assembly language today? | One Dev Question

Just write everything in assembly language. Problem solved!

I honestly wish we all just used C, C++ and Assembly still for everything. I wish that javascript was just a more C-like dynamic programming language, and we all stuck to a C-like syntax universally. In game programming, making shadlers, both glsl, hlsl stick to C-like syntax and it really helps if you're using Unreal Engine for example and the source code is all in C++. Instead we just have too many things to learn at once, especially if you get into web development with all the frameworks using different languages. I kind of wish that all computers just honestly used plain C with no object oriented programming at all to be honest.

Assembly is OG 😎

Yes never forget the fundamentals, Every computer science student must study assembly language

B.s. If you think it's not a Prerequisite for success in this field.. if you don't understand the construct of languages you won't ever have a full and necessary comprehension of your software. The language IS the software .. you can't get around that fact .. what ya gonna do .. use a numbers only to configure. -HA

Assembly is a human-readable version of bytecode. Do you have to learn it? Uhh... hmm... Only if you're an ECEN major in college. Will you use it irl? VERY unlikely! 😅

It's always worth it to learn something, particularly with regard to technology/programming, even if you only ever gain a cursory grasp of the subject. Suggesting to people that the effort spent doing so isn't necessarily worth it doesn't make sense to me. You don't need to become an assembly guru on whatever platform/architecture you're programming on, but knowing at least something about it only helps. The more you know, as they say.

not knowing assembly is living in the world of the matrix..but there are many happy people without knowing the real world

it depends ... I learned 6502 and it was beneficial in customer projects.

Trash Java even basic is much better

Knowledge of assembly, punch cards machine language whatever you say, must be fully preserved. If someday, sun or rogue neutron bombs decide to mess up with global computer networks and devices, who the hell will save us then?

Yes, if you want to be a badass programmer and learn a lot.

I think it's good for deep learning of how computers work. Fetch decode execute cycle

if you do cracking like me for a living in poor middle eastern turkey with most of the people have the montly average salary 250 dollars, and ruled by a puny dictator called erdogan, you do need to know assembly, for the customers from aviation-weapon industry (baykartech) and even for the universities, to do reverse engineering on thousands of dollars valued robotic programs etc.. otherwise i cannot even pay for my rent here in turkey or buy a new laptop.

He looks exactly like I magine assembly programmer would look like.

I did assembly from the 6502 to the 68000 to the x86. I also mixed C and BASIC and Pascal with inline assembly. Then one day I wanted to speed up a C module. So I disassembled it and couldn't find anywhere that I could optimize it. It added some pushes and pops on entry and some on exit, but other than that (in that example), the compiled code was so optimal next to hand written, that I pretty much stopped trying to speed things up by using assembler. Granted, that example was not super complex. I am sure you can still hand optimize using assembly, but where? You would have to find out which circumstances the compiler could have done better. For me, assembly is not worth the trouble anymore. Unless you REALLY REALLY need to squeeze every of clock cycle for what it's worth, today's compilers pretty much get the job done as well as you can hand assemble.

Don't really enjoy videos with musics on background, awesome content tho.

What is the Problem that Is being Worked on because you say is it worth the effort as if it would not be worth the effort if ..... or it may be worth the effort if.... and that all depends on what you trying to accomplish, for example if your goal is to design your own programming language from scratch without using any previous languages to achieve a fundamental understanding between hardware and software then u will need to learn about computer systems & architecture, because if u don't understand the relationship between software, computer languages and computer systems then how r u going to be capable of building software from scratch without becoming a computer programmer, first u need to design and build computers second u need to design and build the computer languages third now you can be a programmer but if u just be a computer programmer via on your own depending on your methods of learning about computer programming you may be working longer hours than you would ideally like to work

2022 and i am learning z80

ok i will try

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I strongly believe that as the years pass by and we abstract more and more our ability to do 'real' programming, we end up with waay too many of programmers who are CRIMINALLY lazy, writing poor code, always looking for the easy, most abstracted way out. Ultimately - and most concerningly - we loose our ability to communicate 'directly' with the CPU.
For countries that 'encourage' this i.e. produce graduates with little/no knowledge of the CPU at expert(!!) level, your biggest security threat is going to be state-sponsored assembly/machine code experts...!!!
This isn't the 80's 'golden years' where all games were written by assembly experts. We're loosing that expertise - fast.

If you want do write device drivers, BIOSes, game engines, virtual engines (like JAVA engine), real-time digital signal processing, - you can learn it. But how many job vacancies are in the market?

If one day everyone in this earth gets petrified and you woke up 3700 years later as a programmer, knowing assembly language would be helpful to get our advanced civilization get back on track

PS: only few may know what this thing referenced to

I want to understand the code of the universe. So I need to write a program or 2 in Assembly.

Linux is still faster than Windows...

Conclusion - It is better to learn assembly if you use C, C++ and for other languages its not really necessary.

I just know assembly so I could compare how much more efficient one implementation is over the other.

Question is, if somebody is going to pay for that knowledge? Otherwise it is only for fun.

You should know how it works just because it's how a computer works

Yes because if you don't, you cannot understand how programming actually works. And you will be forever running your code in another layer or a virtual machine.

I recently got into programming, I started with python but moved to assembly and from there work my way through C, C++, C#, Java and go full circle to python
started with assembly cuz I think it will be good to start from the bottom to what is essentially one step up from machine code and work my way up through the more 'humanlike' languages

when i learned, the choices were small & Basic,
so i Peeked and Poked at
&ff ing stuff... until.

I still have to reverse new back into what is
true... or not
depending on your ending
big or small

assembly language is only for hackers and old people nowadays.

Winjeets would be happy

I think that colleges would need to teach 1 semester in assembler and hardware design. Either building a simple Z80, 6502 or MCS8051 board and write a few simple assembler programs on it.
It teaches you what’s efficient for a cpu and what not. And how hardware in its simplest form works.

It’s true that compilers (C and C++ compilers) are doing incredible things, and have specific OS and CPU knowledge that most programmers don’t have and with today’s CPUs with pipelines and out of order processing hand coded machine code will not be as efficient anymore as what these highly optimized compilers produce.

But for application security it’s a must. And I think academically it makes sense. I’ve trained many BSc graduates and non of them have had assembler anymore and since the 2010s not even C! And you see how terrible they are in efficient coding. They don’t understand system call overhead, context switches and proper memory usage to avoid GC as much as possible; because they don’t have this basic knowledge of operating systems, assembler coding and manual memory management and basic hardware knowledge.

I can write assembly, but don't know how to use it to improve my app.

My dad used to say (translation) "What you don't know hinders what you know" - The more you know... Thanks for the perspective, though !

I only write in assembly

Great, I’m in my second year for my B.S in electrical engineering and I’m taking assembly language and computer organization

In short: "Not if you're a web-dev."

Did he say C# is JIT compiled? I thought C# Was Ahead Of Time?

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