this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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Not sure if I get the joke, is FFmpeg considered slow? That's the only angle I can think of for the joke to work... am I missing something?
DOGE said they're going to rewrite the existing SSA code, which is done in COBOL, to modernize it, and everyone is pointing out how fraught with peril that is. This is saying they're going to do it in assembly, which is what we do when we need highly efficient code, like for a resource-constrained real-time control system, but is also much more challenging to program. The chance of rewriting a giant COBOL application in Assembly, and not making a whole mess of errors, is really small. And it would be very hard to maintain.
Also assembly is even older than COBOL.
I’m unsure if this is also an April fools joke
In broad terms it's true, though there are some variants of assembly that are newer than COBOL.
Assembly language is one step above machine code, and was the first large step toward a world where people write server-side code in Javascript.
Assembly is a way of writing machine code, but with words and hexideci numbers instead of 1s and 0s and comments/white space, it's barely a language, from the 40s.
COBOL is a compiled language from the 60s. The compiler turns the somewhat human-readable code into assembly the computer can read.
Maybe barely, but I imagine most assembly variants have conveniences like labels for jumps, labels for referencing data included in the executable, and at least some also have things like simple macros or calculating mathematical expressions at compiletime.
Assembly isnt a single language though. I could write assembly for riscv or a recent arm ISA and that would be quite new.
I wondered if maybe "assembly" gets used to mean x86 but apparently thats a bunch newer than COBOL so I dont think Im being pedantic :)
Just get the guy that made rollercoaster Tycoon in Assembly, he'll knock it over in a week.
I see no way this could go wrong
I believe you’re overthinking it. The only relation to the project is likely that they have assembly language developers on the team to help implement accelerated format conversions.
It's a genuine xeet(?).
Man let's just stick to tweet. This whole x thing is too silly even for April fools.
*xit.
I should add that the FFmpeg team is quite proud of the fact that they write in C and Assembly for peak performance. They mention it a lot, and so they did here.