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

In the beginning, most software was written in assembly, the CPU s low-level language, in order to achieve acceptable performance on relatively slow hardware. Early programmers were sparing in their use of high-level language code, knowing that a high-level language compiler would generate crummy, low-level machine code for their software. Today, however, many programmers write in high-level languages like C, C++, Pascal, Java, or BASIC. The result is often sloppy, inefficient code. You don t need to give up the productivity and portability of high-level languages in order to produce more efficient software.

In this second volume of the Write Great Code series, you ll learn:
How to analyze the output of a compiler to verify that your code does, indeed, generate good machine code
The types of machine code statements that compilers typically generate for common control structures, so you can choose the best statements when writing HLL code
Just enough 80×86 and PowerPC assembly language to read compiler output
How compilers convert various constant and variable objects into machine data, and how to use these objects to write faster and shorter programs

With an understanding of how compilers work, you ll be able to write source code that they can translate into elegant machine code. That understanding starts right here, with Write Great Code, Volume 2: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level.