erbdex

"My experience in working on Graphite has reaffirmed a belief of mine that scalability has very little to do with low-level performance but instead is a product of overall design. I have run into many bottlenecks along the way but each time I look for improvements in design rather than speed-ups in performance. I have been asked many times why I wrote Graphite in Python rather than Java or C++, and my response is always that I have yet to come across a true need for the performance that another language could offer. In [Knu74], Donald Knuth famously said that premature optimization is the root of all evil. As long as we assume that our code will continue to evolve in non-trivial ways then all optimization6 is in some sense premature."

It is more about the approach that keeps them there. i quote-

"Part of what makes Google such an amazing engine of innovation is their internal technology stack: a set of powerful proprietary technologies that makes it easy for Google developers to generate and process enormous quantities of data. According to a senior Microsoft developer who moved to Google, Googlers work and think at a higher level of abstraction than do developers at many other companies, including Microsoft: “Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement”

+1 The HN effect.

1. i suggest diving a little into a processor architecture first. Z-80 and 8085 are almost the same, conceptually. Once you grasp the fundamentals, you can move onto x86. It too builds upon the architectures mentioned previously. Added concepts are- pipelining, segmentation etc. One of the best sources for me has been- http://www.amazon.com/Microprocessors-Principles-Application...

2. Knowing how the microprocessor works comes really handy while coding assembly as you can't 'catch exceptions' out there. It is like treading a land-mined area and nothing can replace the knowledge of the fundamental terrain- the architecture.

3. Since you know C, you can start with some serious gdb usage, as mentioned by @penberg.

4. Then find your sweet spot between these two ends. You could start with embedded robotics, another viable hobby could be IoT application. Two added advantages of these over 'theoretical' assembly language learning are that-

a) You are doing something with a real-scenario implementation, so you're surely hooked.

b) You can eventually mold a business model around it if you end up with something really innovative.

How the commonwealth remembers men when they die, and that too for a day or two.

:) Doesn't look comfortable.