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Thu, 01 Jun 2006

Write Great Code

Randall Hyde, Write Great Code Vol. 2
Thinking low-level, writing high-level,
 No Starch Press

You might remember Randall Hyde's book about assembler that was reviewed here a while back. Here we go higher level to some extent. The idea is that in order to write great code you need to know and understand what's happening with the compiler. How can you know if code is somewhere near optimal without such information? And the fact is that even though we have multi-GHz CPU's these days and most likely a ton of RAM (we have to just to run the behemoth operating systems) then this problem isn't worth worrying about. It is, of course, worth worrying about.

Under chapter headings like Thinking Low-Level, Writing High Level; 80x86 and PowerPC Assembly for the HLL Programmer; Compiler Operation and Code Generation, plus an examination of control structures and data types, you get a very detailed course in how to get down and get fast. And you get it by being down in the practical detail

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