Designing Great Code Randall Hyde

Volume I teaches important concepts of machine organization in a language-independent fashion. Volume II teaches ways to write high-level language code to help the compiler produce high-quality machine code. By Randall Hyde, author of "The Art Of Assembly Language".



It's a critical lesson that today's computer science students aren't always being taught: How to carefully choose their high-level language statements to produce efficient code. Write Great Code, Volume 2: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level shows software engineers what too many college and university courses don't - how compilers translate high-level language statements and data structures into machine code. Armed with this knowledge, they will make informed choices concerning the use of those high-level structures and help the compiler produce far better machine code - all without having to give up the productivity and portability benefits of using a high-level language.

Understanding the Machine, the first volume in the landmark Write Great Code series by Randall Hyde, explains the underlying mechanics of how a computer works.

If you've asked someone the secret to writing efficient, well-written software, the answer that you've probably gotten is "learn assembly language programming." By learning assembly language programming, you learn how the machine really operates and that knowledge will help you write better high-level language code. A dirty little secret assembly language programmers rarely admit to, however, is that what you really need to learn is machine organization, not assembly language programming.

If you've asked someone the secret to writing efficient, well-written software, the answer that you've probably gotten is "learn assembly language programming." By learning assembly language programming, you learn how the machine really operates and that knowledge will help you write better high-level language code. A dirty little secret assembly language programmers rarely admit to, however, is that what you really need to learn is machine organization, not assembly language programming.