Linus Torvalds Takes On A Performance Patch: "I Relax By Playing With Inline Assembly"
Linus Torvalds Takes On A Performance Patch: "I Relax By Playing With Inline Assembly"
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Yes, who haven't had a glass of red wine, relaxing music and some inline assembly....
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He says this because he kind of ignorantly (his own wordage) wrote in machine code for quite some time before realizing assembly was a thing. So for Linus inline assembly is to machine code as python is to c for a lot of us.
27 0 ReplyWhat does he mean by machine code? Like assembly files or literally 1s and 0s?
1 0 ReplyHe didn't realize assembly was a thing, so he was actually writing machine code instructions
2 0 ReplyHe was probably working with bytes and not individual bits, but yeah. He basically wrote executables directly (to my understanding).
2 0 Reply
One of my oldest programming books is all about using machine language to program.
https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Machine_Language_1981_(raw-bw).pdf
At the time, even assemblers cost money. I remember saving up for Merlin which is an assembler for the Apple II.
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