> What is your evidence in support of the idea that assembly cannot be faster?
I made no such claim.
My gripe was using it as a feature, claiming that since it's in assembly, it's certainly faster, which is just simply not true. In most cases, it's the algorithm that determines performance as opposed to the details of its implementation. Assembly certainly has its place, but arguing a kernel completely implemented in assembly is faster simply due to the abstraction level they're working on does not carry much weight. Of course you'll be able to find hand-tuned algorithms that are much faster in assembly than a higher-level language, but that does not follow that "Complex software written in X is generally slower than complex software written in assembly"
Also, Lua is a poor example. It's performance was much more heavily influenced by portability and embedability.
Of course, if you take two different pieces of software and implement one in assembly language, and the other in high level, you can't claim valid comparison.
But if you take one algorithm and implement it in both languages, assembly implementation will always be faster, thus the basis for their claim.
That's equivalent to claiming Assembly is always faster than other languages, because every program is just an algorithm. It's completely incorrect - I guarantee you I can write an implementation of an algorithm in Assembly that is slower than the same algorithm implemented in Ruby.
I think the person is trying to point out it is you need to be a good programmer to write good assembly, and the a assumption that you will always have a good programmer can be broken sometimes. An algorithm may be an algorithm, but sometimes an inexperienced programmer could easily make it slower.
I made no such claim.
My gripe was using it as a feature, claiming that since it's in assembly, it's certainly faster, which is just simply not true. In most cases, it's the algorithm that determines performance as opposed to the details of its implementation. Assembly certainly has its place, but arguing a kernel completely implemented in assembly is faster simply due to the abstraction level they're working on does not carry much weight. Of course you'll be able to find hand-tuned algorithms that are much faster in assembly than a higher-level language, but that does not follow that "Complex software written in X is generally slower than complex software written in assembly"
Also, Lua is a poor example. It's performance was much more heavily influenced by portability and embedability.