The Art of 64-bit Assembly
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The Art of 64-bit Assembly
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Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#2> what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like
I'm not a Windows-knower, are vtable layouts part of the userkernel ABI?
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#3[dead]
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#4> what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like I'm not a Windows-knower, are vtable layouts part of the user kernel ABI?
Yes, you either follow Itanium ABI (non Win) or MSVC ABI. Technically nothing stops _your_ compiler from implementing totally own conventions but it will only be compatible with itself
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#5> what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like I'm not a Windows-knower, are vtable layouts part of the user kernel ABI?
It’s part of the MSVC x64 ABI, not a part of the kernel ABI. The kernel and user mode (Win32) APIs all use C linkage so vtables are not relevant and the ABI is a convention of the compiler not the OS. Practically speaking though if your software runs on Windows it will probably use the MSVC ABI.
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#6Is anyone still writing assembly in the age of LLMs? Asking seriously because most assembly is just doing one very simple thing very fast and because it's so simple conceptually, an LLM can easily code it without errors.
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#7> what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like I'm not a Windows-knower, are vtable layouts part of the user kernel ABI?
Yes, you either follow Itanium ABI (non Win) or MSVC ABI. Technically nothing stops _your_ compiler from implementing totally own conventions but it will only be compatible with itself
GHC uses its own calling convention yet it's compatible with Win API just fine. The secret, of course, is to implement not only your bespoke calling convention, but also the other ones that you care to interoperate with.
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#8Is anyone still writing assembly in the age of LLMs? Asking seriously because most assembly is just doing one very simple thing very fast and because it's so simple conceptually, an LLM can easily code it without errors.
Yep. In my experience, LLMs easily go in circles with even simple assembly, creating fixes that result in 2x slower code and then fixing those with even slower code. They are pretty great as a reference or finding needle in the haystack bugs though!
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#9> what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like I'm not a Windows-knower, are vtable layouts part of the user kernel ABI?
It’s part of the MSVC x64 ABI, not a part of the kernel ABI. The kernel and user mode (Win32) APIs all use C linkage so vtables are not relevant and the ABI is a convention of the compiler not the OS. Practically speaking though if your software runs on Windows it will probably use the MSVC ABI.
Last time I checked, software compiled with both Cygwin and MSYS2 internally uses SysV calling convention, only switching to WINAPI when calling, well, Win32 API.
Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly
#10Is anyone still writing assembly in the age of LLMs? Asking seriously because most assembly is just doing one very simple thing very fast and because it's so simple conceptually, an LLM can easily code it without errors.
> Is anyone still writing assembly in the age of LLMs ...
Yes. Its "simplicity" is exactly why we pick and assemble piece by hand - we imagine the leanest way.
LLMs are (not just in Assembly, but especially) very precious as a natural language manual.
> an LLM can easily code it without errors
One day it will probably also be able to have sex, and yet we think we will not pass on the experience - unless, like some kind of coding, it will be a "strictly professional only for money" operation (like in Monty Python's Argument sketch).
Edit: as esteemed emptybits wrote above, rephrasing: it's /the Art of/ Assembly.