I was doing some assembler earlier today. I'm integrating a single board computer running linux with a Texas Instruments digital signal processor over the PCI bus. I pretty well have my Linux kernel driver written, but in order to get the whole thing working, I need some code running on the DSP side.

The DSP doesn't have an operating system, so I am using a cross-compiling development environment for it, which lets me develop in Windows (actually, FORCES me to develop in Windows) and compile for the DSP. The development environment supports C and assembler, and I am doing my development in a mixture of both, inlining assembler where I need the speed.

Because at this point in time I am trying to make the PCI interface run as fast as possible, I have been doing some assembler work on the DSP AND I have been doing some x86 assembler on the single board computer.

Assembler is far from "useless" as someone posted on this thread; in fact, it is the lowest level of abstraction in the machine and all the other languages, ultimately, are built up from the underlying assembler - although by the time you get to the highest level languages, it is abstracted so far that you might never realize it.

No no no! I never said it's useless, I said my first experience with assembly language was very exiting but kindoff useless and only for education purpose. Then I said that in some cases it's needed. I love this language. I just couldn't let you pick only one sentence out of my post..
As an example I also developped for analogDSP an fft (canary) library used for triangulation for a robot. It (He?) was then able to detect its position based on three radio emitter placed in the room. What a pain when comparing x86 assembly to DSP assembly. Only comparison to 0, only one address and I had no high level environment, only a pot of nutella and lots of coffee
Last experience was embended Linux 2.0 (TI tm320 or something like that) talking to an integrated modem which was using a DSP (the modem was made by us, from scratch) In the end, we did not manage completly (the modem sometimes didn't detect the carrier) and had to rent the guy who did the code.. He could natively speak assembly language and was able to generate some dtmf only with his mouth..

Are all theoretical languages self-hosting? If so, they should win by that virtue alone!
ta0kira

My favorite to code in is x86 Assembly. The one that I consider the best designed language is Modula-2. I also really like C and Java... The language actually selected though depends on the task... There's a lot of people that like Perl and PHP, but personally I consider them scripting languages and not heavy duty programming languages (sort of like Postscript, the "printer language" that can actually be used as a general purpose language as well).

Ruby by far.

I'd mod you up if I had mod points.

I generally prefer "C" for writing applications but as I have told many people over the years the key to a language choice is dependent on the project. I done serious coding in Assembler based environment (Series 3200 for those recognize the description), INTEL assembler, FORTRAN, Pascal, "C" and C++, various shell scripts, etc. I have played with web environments and would probably use PHP or Perl.

The key is to choose the right language for the project and to not lock yourself into a language that is not suitable for the project.

I'd mod you down if I had.... ;-))

Ptui! Next you'll be saying vi's is Good! ;-)

(I'm just teasing....)

Keep the anger down. Fortran is still in use, though to my knowledge the only people still using it program for either AT&t or telemarketing companies. That's not a joke, just the way I've seen it over the last few years.

VB is to basic as C is to C#: nothing more than the name in common anymore. Distant great^10 grandfathers from whence most languages came. It's just still useful.

My vote *would* be PHP or Perl, but I'm not much of a programmer so I stuck myself in other where I think I ought to be: I can script, I can write html. That's pretty much it. ^_^;;

Gryyphyn

No Pascal?

I'm beside myself with rage that Perl, the one true language, is not an option.

Pascal was the first language I attempted, got me started!

Now Im trying to learn C++, which is why I voted for it, even though Im still no good at it!

C#??

How true, but Haskell rules!

Oh, I almost forgot... I am beside myself with rage that LOLCODE is excluded from the list, too.

I was delighted to see some support for my favorite language (Ada) but how come only one commenter mentioned Ruby? I would have expected an uproar...