Talk:Turbo Assembler
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[edit] To merge
The following has been moved from the former TASM article (now a #redirect here) relevant parts are to be merged into this article. --Wernher 30 Nov 2004 0500 (UTC)
TASM or Turbo Assembler, is the assembler product from Borland. It converts assembly language code to machine code.
[edit] Rise of TASM
TASM gained popularity with developers who used Borland's Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++ and Borland C++ products. Like its siblings, TASM was known to be fast and efficient.
We're talking about a time when programming for the PC hardware platform meant, many a times, having to resort to programming in assembly language for performance. During those times, Borland was well known for products that were far superior to those from Microsoft.
[edit] TASM simplifies assembly language programming
MASM, the Macro Assembler from Microsoft, was a complicated beast to deal with mainly due to the assembler directives and error prone data type handling. TASM simplified assembler directives and helped boost the productivity of programmers (the last thing you want to break your head about when programming in assembly is assembler directives) - this was done by the introduction of what Borland called "IDEAL mode". TASM also provided a compatibility mode for legacy code written for MASM. With additional features like structured record handling and stricter data type checking TASM was the ideal choice for many.
[edit] Who uses TASM today?
I'm really not sure, since TASM does not seem to be available beyond Borland C++ Builder 5. Even if it were available, only some people would use it, probably in the world of embedded systems or operating systems, where assembly language is sometimes the (only and) best way to implement things.
The architecture of modern x86 microprocessors, like the Pentium or the processors from AMD, actually makes writing assembly language code inefficient in many cases. Good and efficient code generation in many cases is best left to high level language optimizing compilers that can analyze the code flow far better than a human can, taking into consideration issues like pipelining, branching, register usage etc.
[edit] TASM Still Sold
If TASM isn't being actively maintained, it's still being sold commercially by Borland. See: http://www.borland.com/us/products/classic_products/index.html. This should be mentioned in the article, as it gives the impression TASM is abandonware.
