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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.realtime,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: [OT] Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada)
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From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>
Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 20:13:46 +0100
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Date: 2005-03-08T20:13:26+01:00
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John Hudak writes:
> What????????????????????????????????????????????????? Assembly
> language? powerful?  If you decide to write a X GUI interface in
> assembly, I'll check in on you in 20 years to see how your
> doing.... Higher level languages handle broader abstract concepts
> better than low level languages.  Assembly is great if you are
> optimizing device drivers or banging bits at the hardware register
> level...not good at implementing scientific algorithms, GUIs,
> databases, etc.   There are thousands of reasearch papers that extol
> the problems of assembly language approach to things, and yes, there
> are places and reasons to use it, but classifying it as a 'higher
> level language' and something more powerful is incorrect....
> -John

I think the problem is to define what everyone means by "powerful".

If by "powerful" I mean "I can do exactly anything I want", or "I can
get the most out of my hardware", then assembly is the most powerful
language.

If OTOH "powerful" means "I can program quickly", then assembly is not
powerful, but e.g. SQL or Delphi are.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.