Bob Applegate <bob@corshamtech.com> writes:

On May 31, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Joseph S. Barrera III via vcf-midatlantic = <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: =20 On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Brian Schenkenberger via = vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote: =20

...

I've been writing assembly for 40+ years and fully expect to be = writing it for another 10+. ;) =20 =20 Are you asserting that, say, VAX assembly and 6502 assembly are the = *same language*? :-)

Somehow I missed this comment. Funny you should mention VAX; it shows how out of touch you are with the VMS world. I have written my fair share and more of VAX assembly but I've written volumes of Alpha and Itanium too. I used to play on PDPs and the micro-computers (CP/M) in the physics lab in college writting assembly. One of my first year EE classes involved 6502 processors too.

Same concepts, even if the target processor is different.

Pretty much.

FWIW, I was in a code review this week for a few hundred bytes of = assembly code. The number of people fluent in assembly at the company = is very small, but this product sells several hundred thousand units a = year and is very important. The code was in C using a highly optimizing = compiler but it couldn=E2=80=99t quite squeeze the code enough once a = new feature was added, and going to a slightly larger processor with = more RAM (32 bytes) was about four cents more per chip, so switching to = assembly was the best approach.

Not all computers have 2 TB disk and 32 GB RAM. When you need to save a = few bytes, assembly is your friend.

Yeah, like the specialized processors incorporated in to satellites which I coded for in my Astrospace days.