Re:Web Assembly now supported across all browsers
by vanderZwan on Monday December 04, 2017 @09:33AM
(#15844052)
> or you simply don't understand what assembly really is
As someone who at one point in his life had a lot of fun writing Z80 for his TI-83+, I do wonder how bit a "market" for a WASM environment oriented towards human editing of the assembly might be. It's probably being built anyway, for the compiler writers. The question is if it might "break out" to other enthusiasts.
It's easy to forget that before higher level languages, assembly was the norm. Assembly at the time was more "human-friendly" to program in too; if you're comfy with C and pointers, going a bit lower really isn't that scary. It's just that the decades of x86 extensions have created hugely complicated beasts that few sane people would dare touch. However, the forty or so z80 opcodes are quick to memorise. I've heard that ARM and 68k is "fun" to work with too (for a certain type of programmer, obviously).
Anyway, the s-expression form of WASM feels like a throwback to the more human friendly CPU days, presumably also because it has to be so platform-independent (and because SIMD isn't in yet). I'm sure there will be enthusiasts playing with it.
As someone who at one point in his life had a lot of fun writing Z80 for his TI-83+, I do wonder how bit a "market" for a WASM environment oriented towards human editing of the assembly might be. It's probably being built anyway, for the compiler writers. The question is if it might "break out" to other enthusiasts.
It's easy to forget that before higher level languages, assembly was the norm. Assembly at the time was more "human-friendly" to program in too; if you're comfy with C and pointers, going a bit lower really isn't that scary. It's just that the decades of x86 extensions have created hugely complicated beasts that few sane people would dare touch. However, the forty or so z80 opcodes are quick to memorise. I've heard that ARM and 68k is "fun" to work with too (for a certain type of programmer, obviously).
Anyway, the s-expression form of WASM feels like a throwback to the more human friendly CPU days, presumably also because it has to be so platform-independent (and because SIMD isn't in yet). I'm sure there will be enthusiasts playing with it.