Kinda. I use the `disassemble` function in Common Lisp quite a bit, and I can't work backwards to explain what a function is doing based on the disassembly.
BUT what I can do is see which functions are being inlined, which values are in memory versus in registers, see if things are being boxed and unboxed a lot, see if SIMD is being used, etc.
And more importantly I can compare two versions of a function to see which one looks better by those criteria. It's not perfect, but IME it works really well for guiding optimization.
I should add that I read the book "Assembly Language: step-by-step" by Jeff Duntemann, and wrote a Tic-Tac-Toe game in assembly ages ago, so that helps a bit to understand the syntax.
What I wish more languages did was what the guile optimizer does. There is a source->source optimizer which does inlining, DCE, CSE and partial evaluation.
That is very handy, especially when writing macros. I only have to look at assembly when I want to know about optimizations that are not visible in the source->source optimizer.
If I ever want to know if something is reified (which I never do) I can always look at the ASM.
AlexErrant · · focus · HN ↗
jlarocco · · focus · HN ↗
BUT what I can do is see which functions are being inlined, which values are in memory versus in registers, see if things are being boxed and unboxed a lot, see if SIMD is being used, etc.
And more importantly I can compare two versions of a function to see which one looks better by those criteria. It's not perfect, but IME it works really well for guiding optimization.
I should add that I read the book "Assembly Language: step-by-step" by Jeff Duntemann, and wrote a Tic-Tac-Toe game in assembly ages ago, so that helps a bit to understand the syntax.
(And technically that's a patch file :-)
bjoli · · focus · HN ↗
That is very handy, especially when writing macros. I only have to look at assembly when I want to know about optimizations that are not visible in the source->source optimizer.
If I ever want to know if something is reified (which I never do) I can always look at the ASM.