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The Art of 64-bit Assembly

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Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#11

Post by tensegrist »

i'm sorry, starting with "you can ask AI to … [but it'll do an incomplete and bad job]" and then launching forth into a hundred words of AI-produced text is not very appetizing

i hope this is the publisher's fault and the author replaces it with something decent of their own. contrary to the opinions i've heard around (including elsewhere on this thread) learning asm is still meaningful today and it's something i'd like to get better at so i will consider getting this book or one like it once $work is a bit less hectic

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#12

Post by emptybits »

amelius wrote: post #6

Is 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.

I'm not being flippant but I think part of your answer is in the first two words of the title.

IME while LLMs may help delivery utility in a finished work, humans often value the absorption, mastery, style, or constraint of performing a mundane activity hands-on and brains-on.

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#13

Post by eat »

amelius wrote: post #6

Is 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.

You could've also asked if people still wrote assembly in the age of compilers, and the answer would be the same. Sometimes we want/need to control or understand what is emitted by the tool.

However, I want to point out the obvious fact that people are still playing the piano in the age of the self-playing piano. Humans are experiential creatures, and we enjoy a wide range of activities for their own sake that may have nothing to do with efficiency of output.

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#14

Post by Keyframe »

amelius wrote: post #6

Is 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.

an LLM can easily code it without errors

can't tell if sarcasm or not. Just in case it's not.. in that case why don't we all vibe everything in assembly? No need for abstractions anymore since that's a human concept. LLM can do it without errors, as you say, and we'll reap the benefits of speed!

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#17

Post by rajeevk »

>> You can ask an AI to explain how vtables work in x86. It will give you something that sounds right. What it won’t give you is what Windows actually expects the vtable to look like, why method dispatch behaves the way it does at the instruction level, or what breaks when you deviate from convention. This volume of The Art of 64-Bit Assembly closes the gap between a plausible explanation and genuine understanding.

Once LLMs are trained with the content of this book, then this statement will no longer be true.

If this book becomes even a bit popular, these LLMs will get access for sure to the content of this book in their next training.

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#18

Post by WalterBright »

amelius wrote: post #6

Is 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.

I do now and then, for bits of code that is not expressible in the language. Things like special instructions, or special fixups.

Re: The Art of 64-bit Assembly

#20

Post by mdp2021 »

Keyframe wrote: post #14
amelius wrote: post #6

Is 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.

an LLM can easily code it without errors can't tell if sarcasm or not. Just in case it's not.. in that case why don't we all vibe everything in assembly? No need for abstractions anymore since that's a human concept. LLM can do it without errors, as you say, and we'll reap the benefits of speed!

> why don't we all vibe everything in assembly

I really loved this retort, but we have to reply: from that cone of perspective, it would be probably better to "vibecode" in C and not hope that the LLM does a better job than the compiler (for efficiency, not for absence of bugs as per the original). (Edit: for clarity: some compilers of low level languages are specialized in ASM optimization - the LLM will hardly beat them.)

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