[OT] Re: nasm over gas?

["Ihar 'Philips' Filipau" <filia@softhome.net>]

Richard B. Johnson wrote:
> 
> I strongly suggest that if you have an interest in assembly, you
> cultivate that interest. Soon most all mundane coding will be
> performed by machine from a specification written by "Sales".
> The only "real" programming will be done by those who can make
> the interface between the hardware and the "coding machine". That's
> assembly!
> 

   I have a long standing dispute with one of my friend: once he has 
said 'asm is dead - every one is using C/C++ now'.

   Those I wasn't able to counter this claim. TSR programmes gone 
together with DOS, and ordinary desktops started challenging expensive 
workstations.

   But little bit later I caught an example: Palm OS. Yes. A lot of 
stuff is written in Asm. Why? Because *size does matter*: size == price, 
bigger application - more expensive it is for your customer. C was not 
able to compete with Asm.

   But now we have hand-helds/mobiles which do run Windoz/Linux. Run 
them almost unmodified/unstripped. Cool. C/C++ rules. Windoz CE with VBA 
- dream of idiot.

   Asm dead again? No-o-o-o. L3/L4 switch we are doing utilizes special 
micro-controller, which can be programmed in dialect of MIPS assembler. 
It has fast RAM for 4K of insn's and executes in real-time. I didn't saw 
C compiler for this - but this is really exotic example. But still 
example - Asm is far from being dead.

   What will be next? In my short carrier I saw as Asm was dying three 
times. But I beleive it will reborn over and over again ;-)))