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by gldrk 175 days ago
High-level languages were absolutely indispensable at a time when every hardware vendor had its own bespoke instruction set.

If you only ever target one platform, you might as well do it in assembly, it's just unfashionable. I don't believe you'd lose any 'productivity' compared to e.g. C, assuming equal amounts of experience.
2 comments
naasking 175 days ago
> I don't believe you'd lose any 'productivity' compared to e.g. C, assuming equal amounts of experience.

I'm skeptical, but do you think that you'd see no productivity gains for Python, Java or Haskell?

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gldrk 175 days ago
Those are garbage-collected environments. I have some experience with a garbage-collected 'assembly' (.NET CIL). It is a delight to read and write compared to most C code.
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naasking 175 days ago
Agree to disagree then! I've done plenty of CIL reading and writing. It's fine, but not what I'd call pleasant, not even compared to C.
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saulpw 175 days ago
Type checking, even that as trivial as C's, is a boon to productivity, especially on large teams but also when coding solo if you have anything else in your brain.
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