this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
173 points (88.8% liked)
Programmer Humor
34808 readers
352 users here now
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
- Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
- No NSFW content.
- Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was actually tempted to try learning nasm for funsies a year or two ago until I discovered it doesn't support ARM processors 🥲
Assembly languages are always architecture specific. Thats kind of their defining feature. Assembly is readable machine code.
nasmis an assembler though, not a 'languages', that only supportsx86/x64.gasfor example supports a wide range of architectures so you can writerisc-v,arm,x64, etc.That's like saying "clang is a compiler though, not a language". It's correct but completely beside the point. Unless you're writing a compiler, "cross platform assembler" is kind of an insane thing to ask for. If want to learn low level programming, pick a platform. If you are trying to write a cross-platform program in assembly, WHY!? Unless you're writing a compiler. But even then, in this day and age using a cross-platform assembler is still kind of an insane way to approach that problem; take a lesson from decades of progress and do what LLVM did: use an intermediate representation.
Are you arguing that assembly languages are not architecture-specific? I don't think that's the typical definition.
Nasm is an assembler, but it also represents a specific assembly language targeting x86 architectures.
Gas is an assembler of a higher order. It can emit code for many architectures, and thus it accepts many different architecture-specific assembly languages.