• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
    481·
    3 months ago

    “Hand-written assembly” is not more powerful than any other Turing-complete language (including Perl and Python), just more painfully slow and prone to human error to write. (Perhaps if you have a special case requiring speed (such as the processing being done in a tight loop in a financial trading app and the results needing to beat rival trading systems by milliseconds or something equally esoteric), it’d make sense, but in that case, a modern compiler (for, say, C/C++/Rust or similar) would yield comparable results, and if a lot is riding on those milliseconds, you’d eschew code and build a FPGA that pulls the data out of memory buffers in hardware or similar.)

    So these days, the only use case for hand-writing assembly language (other than low-level OS/firmware programming or compiler development) is performative Feats Of Strength, where the challenge is the point. And in that case, you’d be trying to do something heroically challenging, like writing an Atari 2600 demake of Baldur’s Gate or something.

    • stingpie@lemmy.world
      21·
      3 months ago

      Hand written assembly is much more powerful than a turing-complete high level language because it lets you fuck up everything. Rust and python are way too wimpy to allow a user to destroy their computer.

  • Vent@lemm.ee
    33·
    3 months ago

    Grep is as high power as vim and emacs??? In what universe?

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        2·
        3 months ago

        Should they be more or less difficult, though? Really basic coding seems easier to me than remembering an endless soup of hotkeys I’ll rarely need.

        • lunarul@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 months ago

          Not sure why you’d remember the ones you rarely need. I just memorized the things I use. Remembering stuff you use is much easier than learning a programming language. I’ve been programming for over 30 years and I’ve been using vim as my only “IDE” for the last 14 years. It would take me significantly less time to teach someone vim than to teach them programming.

          • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
            3·
            3 months ago

            See, the thing with Vim is that I don’t actually know which of the endless features I need. I don’t really feel like I’m missing much with the basic text editors.

            Maybe you could shine some light on it for me? Right now I’m the sideways-glancing monkey meme every time IDEs come up.

            • lunarul@lemmy.world
              2·
              3 months ago

              For me it’s just convenience. It’s not because vim is better, but because it works on any terminal. I don’t depend on a particular IDE setup, I can jump on any computer and start working. And since I’ve been using it for so many years I’m very fast in it. The best tool is often the one you know best.

  • visor841@lemmy.world
    211·
    3 months ago

    Programming languages is way too broad a category. There’s a lot of variation in both power and difficulty.

  • jecxjoEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    I, as one of the ten people on the planet who writes awk scripts, noticed the most powerful text processing tool is missing.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 months ago

    I like that this clearly articulates that text editors are just whatever the hell vim & emacs are, with training wheels

  • netvor@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 months ago

    WISYWIG managing nested bullet point or numbered lists should be in right-bottom corner.