How popular is Randy Hyde's HLA (High Level Assembly) language?

Question

I've been using Randy Hyde's HLA (High Level Assembly) for over 4 years now. Does anyone know if it is a well known language in the mainstream (e.g. along with BASIC, Pascal, C/C++/C#, etc.)?

Paul

Answer 1

HLA was originally conceived as a tool to teach assembly language programming at the college/university level. The idea is to leverage students existing programming knowledge when learning assembly language to get them up to speed as rapidly as possible. Most students taking an assembly language programming course have already been introduced to high-level control structures such as IF, WHILE, FOR, etc. HLA allows students to immediately apply that programming knowledge to assembly language coding early in their course, allowing them to master other prerequisite subjects in assembly prior to learning how to code low-level forms of these control structures.

Answer 2

I don't know about others, but for me, Assembly was like the glue that made all my computer knowledge come together. Before assembly, I used to wonder how all the wonderful software could work and how Operating Systems and games were developed, after learning assembly, all these things turned into simple commands that the computer executed one after the other. I think that learning assembly makes your understanding of how a computer do what it does very clear. You get to know the internal workings of a computer. Even though I only know the basics of Assembly language and am probably not good enough to develop any kind of use-able software in it, I still think that learning assembly made a great deal of difference to my programming knowledge. I think that once you learn assembly, you really understand that computers are just stupid machines that do exactly what you tell them to do. From there on, grasping anything is just simple. You then get the ability to not think about the latest software as doing magic, or an Operating System as a program that was made by geniuses.... From there on, its simple MOV, ADD, SUB, ... instructions that make all the magic inside the computer work, even Linux or Windows!!! My advice, even though you'll probably never use it, learn a bit about assembly. It won't take more than a day or two, but will probably go a long way.

Answer 3

It’s more meaningful to compare HLA with FASM, NASM, MASM, GAS, and so on. Assembly in general is obviously well known. Systems level programs that require specialized optimization will use it. There’s no other equivalent at the level of assembly.

HLA won’t have the level of usage that MASM and GAS do. But it doesn’t really matter unless you are trying to work on a large scale project. Although, I suggest if you are going to program at the applications level, you move onto Java, C#, Python, Ruby, etc. or if you want to stay at the systems level C or C++.

Answer 4

No certainly I've not heard it; but from the description above I think I know what it is. Unless you actually keep failing the same university course I have doubt that you really used it for 4 years except you be a professor teaching it.

Since with my UT days back with introductory low-level course we were taught a theoretical assembly known as Simple RISC Machine but it had no assembler or any actual implementation the stuff is purely on paper, that's before moving on to a real Intel microcontroller.

Answer 5

I've heard of all the others, but not Randy Hyde's if that's any help. Did you choose it for a specific reason? If it works and you're happy with it, I guess that's all that matters.