Assembly - Speed or not?

#1 · December 8, 1997, 5:56 pm

Posted by: wilcox <wilcox@...>

Thanks to all you guys for your recent help getting me "jump-started" with
Assembly. Now, I have another question, just for curiousity. I've heard it
said that writting in Assembly brings speed with it. Rick was talking about
re-writting repetive FNs in Assembly for speed, and I've heard about game
programmers that write some sections in Assembly for shear speed. Now, here
comes the question: If all code (C, Pascal, FB, any language like that) is
compiled into a CODE resource when it's app is built, why is there a speed
increase when writting in Assembly? Now, I understand inserting assembly in
an INTERPRETED languages (Applescript, Usertalk, Hypertalk, C64 Basic,
AppleII Basic, etc) would DEFINANTLY show an increase in speed, but why
does it make ANY differance at all in COMPILED languages? Is it because
humans can write tigher assembly code then current computers can, resulting
in less instructions, and a shorter execution time (I don't know here, just
guessing 🙂 )?

Or, is all of this "Assembly = Speed" issue just a myth?

Questioning again :),
-Wilcox

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