[Coco] Space Invaders - Translated from Intel 8080 to Motorola 6809 for the CoCo 3

[Salvador Garcia]

My perspective is that asm language is becoming a lost art because the new hardware is fast enough to make the critical speed difference between asm and c negligible.
Asm had a place where speed was critical and a high level language didn't cut it. Not so true any, if all.
Still, asm programming has a special place for its intimacy with the hardware it runs on. I started out my programming days with asm, creating diagnostic s/w for Ethernet LAN cards and OS ports. It gave me a certain discipline that I have not experienced with Java or C# which are languages that specifically want to alienate the programmer from the hardware.
Salvador 

      From: Mark McDougall <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au>
 To: coco at maltedmedia.com 
 Sent: Thursday, December 29, 2016 5:58 AM
 Subject: Re: [Coco] Space Invaders - Translated from Intel 8080 to Motorola 6809 for the CoCo 3
   
On 29/12/2016 7:44 AM, Zippster wrote:

> I don’t know for sure, but I do keep hearing things about assembly
> programming becoming a thing of the past. Which is a real shame if
> true.

It is absolutely true, unfortunately. With the cost of embedded ARM 
cores in microcontrollers that have all manner of peripheral cores 
built-in, there's simply no reason to use it, even for high-reliability 
systems. Plenty of mission-critical systems running C code on hardened 
RTOS kernels.

Assembly is now, and will only continue to be, a lost art. I suspect our 
generation that cut their teeth on 8-bit machines will be the last to 
use it en masse (if you could call it that now). It will eventually fall 
by the way-side as later generations become completely uninterested in 
the 8-bit systems as they have no direct link to them.

Regards,

-- 
Mark McDougall
<http://retroports.blogspot.com.au>

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