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practical_romantic  2yr ago (text post)   3452 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 21, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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UI programming is a pain in the dick in assembly.

To be fair, programming literally anything is a pain in the dick in assembly.

Yeah, but some things are worse than others.

Right now I'd rank UI Programming as the worst. Although I'm developing a sense for a style that works more formulaically and facilitates changing the layout at will.

Some things I actually find really convenient, thanks to x86's exposed BCD and "string" instructions. Likewise, it's loop and rep instructions.

Then there are the things that simply aren't possible with most platforms today. FM synth is a great way to programmatically create music, and directly programming the registers of an OPL chip is relatively straightforward in assembly. I guess it's not easier than telling Unity or Unreal engine to play an MP3. But if you were trying to build up something from scratch, it's a million times better.

Same thing goes for graphics programming. EGA or VGA aren't that bad. You set some registers, then start writing to memory space. The equivalent "hello world" for DX12 of Vulkan is many times larger and more complex. Which says a lot when you are comparing it to assembly! Once again, there are libraries which dumb it back down. You could use SDL if all you want is to throw pixels up on a screen. And there are always engines like Unity or Unreal. But once again, if you feel the compulsion to build from scratch...

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