Write Great Code, Volume 2, 2nd Edition: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level

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About Write Great Code, Volume 2, 2nd Edition: Thinking

Product Description Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level, the second volume in the landmark Write Great Code series by Randall Hyde, covers high-level programming languages (such as Swift and Java) as well as code generation on 64-bit CPUsARM, the Java Virtual Machine, and the Microsoft Common Runtime. Today's programming languages offer productivity and portability, but also make it easy to write sloppy code that isn't optimized for a compiler. Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level will teach you to craft source code that results in good machine code once it's run through a compiler. You'll learn:    •  How to analyze the output of a compiler to verify that your code generates good machine code    •  The types of machine code statements that compilers generate for common control structures, so you can choose the best statements when writing HLL code    •  Enough assembly language to read compiler output    •  How compilers convert various constant and variable objects into machine data With an understanding of how compilers work, you'll be able to write source code that they can translate into elegant machine code. NEW TO THIS EDITION, COVERAGE OF:    •  Programming languages like Swift and Java    •  Code generation on modern 64-bit CPUs    •  ARM processors on mobile phones and tablets    •  Stack-based architectures like the Java Virtual Machine    •  Modern language systems like the Microsoft Common Language Runtime Review Praise for the first edition of Write Great Code, Volume 2: "Set aside some money and buy this book, or get a friend to buy it and get it from them while still in the store. When you get home, read it TWICE so that you master what is in these pages. Then read it again." —DevCity " Write Great Code Volume 2 exceeds its goal of helping developers pay more attention to application performance when writing applications in high-level languages. This book is a must for any high-level application developer. —Free Software Magazine "As a high-level-language programmer, if you want to know what's really going on with your programs, you need to spend a little time learning assembly language—and you won't find an easier introduction." —DevX "This is a good book. A very very good book. Frankly, I'm blown away at the quality of writing." —Toronto Ruby User Group About the Author Randall Hyde is the author of The Art of Assembly Language, one of the most highly recommended resources on assembly, and the three volume Write Great Code series (all No Starch Press). He is also the co-author of The Waite Group's MASM 6.0 Bible. He has written for Dr. Dobb's Journal and Byte, as well as professional and academic journals. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION There are many aspects of great code—far too many to describe properly in a single book. Therefore, this second volume of the Write Great Code series concentrates on one important part of great code: performance. As computer systems have increased in performance from MHz, to hundreds of MHz, to GHz, the performance of computer software has taken a back seat to other concerns. Today, it is not at all uncommon for software engineers to exclaim, “You should never optimize your code!” Funny, you don’t hear too many computer application users making such statements. Although this book describes how to write efficient code, it is not a book about optimization. Optimization is a phase near the end of the software development cycle in which software engineers determine why their code does not meet performance specifications and then massage the code to achieve those specifications. But unfortunately, if no thought is put into the performance of the application until the optimization phase, it’s unlikely that optimization will prove practical. The time to ensure that an application has reasonable performance characteristics is at the beginning, during the design and implementation phases. Optimization can fine-tune