TIOBE has updated the programming language rankings for July 2016, and the biggest highlight this month is that the low-level assembly language has once again entered the top 10.
Many people are surprised by the reasons that have led this low-level programming language to re-enter the top 10. They do not understand why a language that is known for its low productivity and high error rates among programmers has become popular again. This can be explained by two main reasons: first, the number of small devices capable of running assembly code is rapidly increasing, such as your smart toothbrush and coffee machine running assembly; second, in terms of performance, no other language can surpass assembly. Interestingly, this month has seen a resurgence of older languages, with Tcl rising from 65th to 48th place, CFML from 102nd to 66th, and Maple from 94th to 74th.
TOP 20:
Trends in Popular Languages:
Rank 20-50:
Assembly language may sound unimpressive, but understanding assembly is actually very useful. A response from a Zhihu user, Lei Mengde, can help you recognize the significance of assembly language!
In my nearly 10 years of experience in embedded programming, there have not been many instances where I have used assembly. Especially with ARM, which uses address space to manipulate registers, most code can be written in C. The skills in assembly are mainly used for:
1. Reading bootloader code: Generally, aside from the core parts of the OS that contain assembly code, a portion of the bootloader is typically written in assembly. Understanding this code is helpful for grasping the architecture and the device boot process.
2. Analyzing problems: Nowadays, compilers are highly optimized, and the generated code can sometimes be difficult to correlate strictly with the C code. Therefore, when stepping through certain issues, it is necessary to understand some assembly statements to analyze the actual execution flow of the program.
3. Performance: Most of the time, the compiler’s optimization is sufficient, and our hand-written assembly may not be more efficient. However, in certain specific scenarios, we can optimize by using assembly to call specialized hardware instructions of the CPU.
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