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High Level Assembly 53

Posted by Hemos from the for-the-insane-or-hardcore dept.
dunric writes "Randall Hyde has developed a programming language called High Level Assembly (HLA). It is a great way for new programmers to develop applications for both Windows and Linux. It works with a variety of assemblers, including Gas, Fasm, Masm and others. The website for Randy's HLA is located at: http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/"
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High Level Assembly More

High Level Assembly

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  • I'll pass (Score:5, Funny)

    by niff ( 175639 ) <woutervannifterick@gmail . c om> on Monday May 31, 2004 @07:40AM (#9295381) Homepage
    i'm waiting for Microsoft ASM.NET

  • High Level Assembly (HLA) (Score:5, Funny)

    by Red Pointy Tail ( 127601 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @07:42AM (#9295385)
    ...also known as C.

    • Re:High Level Assembly (HLA) (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tobias Luetke ( 707936 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @12:35PM (#9296871)
      I think this should be modded as Insightful not Funny....

      With modern C compiles in place its all but impossible to write an entire project with faster code then the same program in C.
      ASM is good to optimize some sections, but even that is questionable nowadays because its probably less expensive to get a faster computer then having a coder with great insight into ASM optimize a section of the code for a week.

      Also C code can run on a cluster or super computer if required.
      • I have to say that I thought that c was supposed to be a High Level Assembly language. I can remember when c was dismissed because it was too low level. Ada was supposed to be the next big thing. Intel even tried to make an Ada Chip. Turned out c was the next big thing.

      • [...] because its probably less expensive to get a faster computer then having a coder with great insight into ASM optimize a section of the code for a week.

        This is exactly the problem these days. People think so way without really considering the consequences.

        If you have a moderate or a large project in corporate environment, or a project that is delivered to larger audience, it's not uncommon to have 10,000+ users.

        Now think if you have to get a new PC for each and every user because you don't want to

        • See I compleatly agree with you, but i also think that your argument is very Theoretical.

          I just can't come up with a type of software which would trigger such a behaviour.
          Honestly there are two types of applications which still hit computers hard: Math problem solving tools and computer games.

          Games are a whole topic in themselves. Well optimized code is a feature which can cause more sells, so optimized asm code will have a home here for a long time. Math is usually so complex that you need infrastructur
      • optimizing a section of code in asm is about what 99% of asm programmers do these days. code that requires such optimizations will always be around. typically any place you have an "inner loop" that could be nested within several outer loops that actually gets executed millions or billions of times.. that's when even a single redundant instruction or calculation that takes a few clock cycles can cost you seconds minutes or hours in the final execution time.

        dsp and rendering are two areas I have experience
    • As the other poster said: Insightful, not Funny.

      For example SmartEiffel [loria.fr] compiles Eiffel-code to assembly-like C-code and then compiles the C-code to executable code using an ANSI-C compiler. Smart and efficient way to make a new compiler produce extremly fast code and be crossplatform without an extra effort.
      • Smart and efficient way to make a new compiler produce extremly fast code and be crossplatform without an extra effort.


        Except that the Eiffel->C translation effectively obliterates any chance of using the (presumably) much stronger semantics of Eiffel for optimizations which are not possible in C, due to the fact that a C compiler doesn't know about the semantics of Eiffel, and consequently cannot know of any "non-C" properties of the intermediate C program.

  • FAQ (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fulkkari ( 603331 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @08:01AM (#9295439)

    ...is something you should probably read. Link here [ucr.edu].

    Interesting project, but quite useless for us that prefer portability.

    • Re:FAQ (Score:2, Insightful)

      by LordNimon ( 85072 )
      Portability in assembly language? Huh?

    • Re:FAQ (Score:3, Interesting)

      by aminorex ( 141494 )
      For some of us, the ability to use assembly-language
      to optimize critical sections on sensitive platforms
      or to access memory-mapped hardware registers
      is the sine qua non for the very option of
      writing portable code. Absent this ability, we'd
      have to write entire systems in low-level asm.

  • ....meanwhile in other news...... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrIrwin ( 761231 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @08:01AM (#9295445) Journal
    ....Sun students get to perfect thier cross platform techniques by programming the JVM natively.

    BTW, PLC's are commonly programmed in "assembler", but the industrial automation worlds idea of Assembler is remarkebly similar to this HLA.

  • Relax, it's a teaching tool... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Cragen ( 697038 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @09:53AM (#9295944)
    HLA was created to help make teaching assembly language easy (for both instructors and students). This paper describes the features of HLA that make it suitable for teaching assembly language programming.

    Kinda like MIPS/SPim. Assembly: The Anti-Java language. (Haven't decided if that is a comment or compliment...)

    Oldbie.

    • Re:Relax, it's a teaching tool... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Exactly like SAL (Simple Assembly Language). MIPS/Spim is a processor/assembly language (MIPS) and an assembler and emulator (Spim). Spim is a great tool in itself. SAL was added onto Spim as a teaching tool.

      We (Goodman [wisc.edu], et al) designed SAL back in 1990 when the CS354 Computer Organization and Programming was moved from VAX. I was a TA at the time and added the SAL code onto Spim.

    • In my day, we learned MIC-1 and MAC-1 from Tanenbaum's book "Structured Computer Organization", and we liked it.

      Google tells me the kids use java to simulate [highpoint.edu] it now.

    • We're learning an even simpler language in my machine dependent programming class at UCD. It is called CUSP and was originally programmed in Pascal back in the late 80s/early 90s :-/

      Our latest project is PacMan in assembly. It's already at 1000 lines of code and the ghosts don't even have an AI moving routine yet.

    • Is that surposed to make it better? Have you forgotten Pascal and BASIC? "Teaching" languages are often so bad that they make people worse programmers. Make people learn ASM the hard way, like I did, and they will thank you for it (as soon as they stop trying to kill you long enough to realise they have learned the language).

  • Wow that's gross (Score:5, Informative)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @10:58AM (#9296322)
    Take a look at the sample programs [ucr.edu].

  • Teaching? Yes. Applications? Er.. why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EnglishTim ( 9662 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @11:09AM (#9296378)
    I'm sure it's a great teaching tool for learning assembler, and if you need to do a bit of assembler for some reason, cool.

    However, using it to teach new programmers how to program applications? Why?

    It's

    a) Harder to learn than a High Level Language.
    b) Takes a lot more work to get anything done when compared to High Level Languages.
    c) Is much less use in a working envronment than knowledge of a High Level language is.

    • That's the question nobody can answer. I have quite alot of experience with the author, Randall Hyde, and can tell you in no uncertain terms he beyond a brilliant programmer. He also suffers from some kind of pathology such as megalomania or manic depressive disorder.

      Nobody can answer the question -- why do you need a language that has none of the advantadges of assembley, AND none of the advantadges of a higher level language?

      • I haven't read the whole site yet (I got a Spanish paper due in an hour, yikes!), but from what I can tell the idea is to give the user all the advantages of assembly with some of the advantages of compiled languages.

        I have to say, I could really groove on this.

    • Re:Teaching? Yes. Applications? Er.. why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 31, 2004 @01:41PM (#9297246)
      I'm sure it's a great teaching tool for learning assembler, and if you need to do a bit of assembler for some reason, cool.

      However, using it to teach new programmers how to program applications? Why?

      For the same reason it's valuable for programmers to know any language other than the one their company uses. Because teaching someone to write applications isn't the same as teaching them to program.

      This language is basically like C but more so: nobody in their right minds would consider using it for a major project, but it's very useful to have some idea of how this stuff really works.

      I assure you, the moment I discovered what a 'for' loop compiled to, that was like a lightbulb going on in my head: suddenly programming made sense instead of just being about typing mystical formulae. Since then, sure, I've never touched ASM again, and these days I work almost entirely in functional languages that end up being a million miles away from the hardware, but I don't think I wasted my time when I did learn ASM.
      • " " This language is basically like C but more so: nobody in their right minds would consider using it for a major project, but it's very useful to have some idea of how this stuff really works. " "

        Tell that to the Linux Kernel developers.

    • Structured assembly language not new (Score:4, Interesting)

      by waterbear ( 190559 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @02:27PM (#9297465)
      HLA looks like a complex programming environment.

      Assuming a common role of assembler, to fine-tune a critical smallish bit of code, I can see the convenience of having a higher level than normal of language constructs. It can make the flow of logic more transparent, (e.g. nestable conditional blocks, loops with readable criteria, repeat-until, do-while, switch/case structure, etc).

      On the other hand, providing this kind of pseudo-high level language structure in assembler programs has been around a long time, and can be done more simply. I still have an assembler macro library around that in its original version (circulated on 80s bbs networks) did this for at least some early versions of MASM and TASM.

      (Most of the identifiers would probably have to be changed for compatibility with newer assemblers because it used non-standard initial characters to enable constructs looking a bit like (ignore the 1--- 's, they just adjust formatting in the Slashdot editor)

      1---- .if (test)

      1---- .orif (another test)

      1------ (whatever code)

      1---- .else

      1-------- .while (yet another test)

      1----------- (whatever other code)

      1-------- .endwhile

      1---- .endif

      and suchlike constructs).

      As I first read it, it was a macro library carrying a by-line from 'Jim Holtman, 1982'. It was not very big, the whole thing (even after some more macros for other logic-extensions were added)came to an include-file size of no more than about 10 kb.

      Maybe it's not clear why anything bigger would be needed.

      -wb-

  • HLA and Art of Assembly (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dayflowers ( 729580 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @12:08PM (#9296747)
    This is hardly news to anyone. If my memory doesn't fail me, that has been around for at least two years. And if you were ever into assembly or even just curious, you were bound to stumble uppon the Art of Assembly (his book, a must read when learning assembly) and his site. Its not like HLA was any secret of even hidden in some obscure webpage...

  • Randall Hyde's long-term project ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chromodromic ( 668389 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @12:22PM (#9296817)
    Actually, HLA ain't nothing new, and if you've been doing any hanging out on comp.lang.asm then you've seen his name popping up on posts about every single day, several times per day, promoting HLA and helping newbies for years now.

    I downloaded his book, "Art of Assembly Language" (avail. at No Starch, http://www.nostarch.com/) a couple of years ago before it had been published by No Starch and it's well written, still available for free either HTML [ucr.edu] , or PDF [ucr.edu].

    If you're using Windoze then it's definitely worth checking out the excellent RadASM [visualassembler.com] assembly language IDE for Windows, which is itself written in assembly, and also supports HLA. Randall Hyde devotes a chapter somewhere, either in his book or on his site, I can't remember, to configuring and using RadASM.

    One of the posts has questioned the value of teaching assembly to newbies, but I think there's a huge value for serious students. It's hard to appreciate garbage collection, for one, until you've had to pick up your own memory trash. But more importantly, most compilers out there output to some intermediary assembly language, and understanding the inner workings of your processor, your compiler and your own programs is one essential difference between being, well, a hack and being really, really good. There are other differences, to be sure, but that's one.

    I haven't been a huge fan of HLA myself for various, and admittedly completely arbitrary reasons. But Randall Hyde has put megatons of work into his stuff, doing some extremely impressive things, and he's always ready and willing to be helpful on the newsgroups, so if you have an interest then I would probably go to his site and to comp.lang.asm before I went anywhere else. Anyone stands to learn a ton.
    • It's hard to appreciate garbage collection, for one, until you've had to pick up your own memory trash
      Well yes, they did teach us C at my school.

      But our coverage of assembler was limited (not a full course). Just implementing some functions, called by C. And analysing the output of various compilers and flags. The focus was just on the performance tricks.

  • I noticed its standard calling convention is to use the x86 ENTER/LEAVE instructions. From what I've seen of other programs, this convention is certainly ... unique. Every compiler I've seen handles the stack manually and doesn't use these instructions, which do a lot of scoping work for you in the form of a data structure called a display. It looks neat, but HLA has got to be the only compiler I've seen that uses it. My guess is that it doesn't by itself support a jump to a procedure, that it simply cr

    • Re:wow, displays (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's been about 10 years since I've written a compiler, but displays are an optimization for statically scoped languages that allow nested procedures. Examples of static scoping with nested procedures are Pascal and Java. Your call stack may be 100 levels deep, but a procedure nested 3 deep only ever needs to look at 3 of those entries to resolve variables. A display lets you access those variables without walking the entire call stack. You can't just statically analyze your way around that problem. If
      • A display lets you access those variables without walking the entire call stack. You can't just statically analyze your way around that problem. If you've been looking at C compilers then it's a different story since they don't allow nesting.

        I admit it, it's from looking at C. Anything I've looked at that's allowed nested functions has tended to be high enough level that they're implemented on a virtual machine of some sort, so they do walk either their own stack of activations or the C stack. Thanks fo

  • High Level Assembler for JVM use (Score:3, Informative)

    by astrojetsonjr ( 601602 ) on Monday May 31, 2004 @03:35PM (#9297808)
    If you are looking for a High Level Assmebler that generates Java Byte Code look at Jamaica. It allows Java control structures around the byte code. It is simple to use and has some very good documentation. Jamaica (on the Judoscript site) [judoscript.com]
  • ... a "way for new programmers to develop applications for both Windows and Linux"!!! Why didn't anyone think of this sooner!

  • I did this independently 20 years ago. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to program a computer which only had BASIC (a Sinclair ZX-81 like).

    After some time, I decided hex codes sucked big time. So I decided to code an assembler in BASIC.

    Also, I always found assembly syntax awkward... so instead of:

    LD HL, DE

    I would write:

    HL := DE

    Pascal-like, but no semicolon at the end. Memory references were like:

    A := MEM[HL] .... equivalent to LD A,(HL)

    JMPs were written as GOTO, while conditional branches were written as:

    IF A <> 0 THEN GOTO LABEL, meaning JNZ LABEL.

    EQUs

  • Hey! Look everybody! Larry Wall has invented a language called Perl [perl.org]! It's great for extracting reports from text.

    Randall put this out like almost 3 years ago. And frankly I find HLA more confusing than as or nasm.

  • Surely the whole point of using assembly is that you can optimize specifically for the platform (otherwise why not just use C?).

    But if it has to be "High-Level", then that implies that you cannot get access to or exploit the particulars of the underlying platform. E.g.: Optimal instruction scheduling, pipeline depths are different from platform to platform, so how you accomodate that? If this is just about generating assembler specifically for each platform from a "template", then why not just use a generi

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