Questions tagged [low-level]
Questions concerning low-level aspects of a system: programming close to the underlying details and hardware.
13 questions
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Why are cryptic short identifiers still so common in low-level programming?
There used to be very good reasons for keeping instruction / register names short. Those reasons no longer apply, but short cryptic names are still very common in low-level programming.
Why is this? ...
57
votes
11
answers
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Were the first assemblers written in machine code?
I am reading the book The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles, which contains projects encompassing the build of a computer from boolean gates all the way ...
35
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13
answers
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Low level programming - what's in it for me? [closed]
For years I have considered digging into what I consider "low level" languages. For me this means C and assembly. However I had no time for this yet, nor has it EVER been neccessary.
Now because I ...
22
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9
answers
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What are the complexities of memory-unmanaged programming?
Or in other words, what specific problems did automated garbage collection solve? I've never done low-level programming, so I don't know how complicated can freeing resources get.
The kind of bugs ...
0
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2
answers
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Object Oriented Design for chess
Recently I came across some article on Chess OOPS design.Following is some snippet from it:
public class Chess {
ChessBoard chessBoard;
Player[] player;
Player currentPlayer;
List<...
17
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4
answers
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Why do some programmers categorize C, Python, C++ differently? - regarding level
I am taking an introductory course on python and the instructor says that python is a high level language and C and C++ are low level languages. It's just confusing. I thought that C, C++, Python, ...
43
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10
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Why not have a High Level Language based OS? Are Low Level Languages more efficient?
Without being presumptuous, I would like you to consider the possibility of this.
Most OS today are based on pretty low level languages (mainly C/C++)
Even the new ones such as Android uses JNI & ...
12
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3
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Why do compilers typically only generate executables for the platform they are installed on?
I'm a C++ developer and in an attempt to better understand cross-platform development, I'm trying to get a better understanding of some implementation details of compilers and how exactly they create ...
12
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4
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What are the algorithms behind low pause GC?
Some languages, for exemple java, introduced a low pause GC.
Those GC can do most of the work without pausing the whole world. This is obviously a quite hard problem because it require to analyze the ...
5
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6
answers
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What are memory addresses? [closed]
I have more or less 0 knowledge in low-level topics, so forgive my possible ignorance.
I know that in languages such as C, pointers hold 'memory addresses', i.e. strings (or binary data?) written in ...
1
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4
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Why use a higher level language? [closed]
A question that gets asked a lot is "Why use low level languages if you can code in high level languages more easily (and often tersely)?". I think the answers are fairly straight forward here, being ...
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What kinds of low level knowledge matter? [closed]
I realize that this question is similar to Low level programming - what's in it for me, but the answers didn't really address my question well. Part from just an understanding, how exactly does your ...
0
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2
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Are there any languages that have both high- and low-level facilities? [closed]
Are there any languages that have both high- and low-level facilities? If not, is it feasible to create one? Why or why not?
In theory, it would be very helpful to have a programming language that ...