C might be a horrible language......there's no real alternative to C

MOV AH,02
MOV DL,"A" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"S" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"M" 
INT 21h
MOV DL,"?" 
INT 21h
MOV AH,04Ch
MOV AL,00
INT 21h
[download]

When you look at the alternative C starts to look pretty damn good! The only advantage of ASM is that the binaries tent to be tiny ie 24 bytes for that example as opposed to 36K for the same thing compiled in C using cl.exe:

perl -e "print pack'H*','b402b241cd21b253cd21b24dcd21b23fcd21b44cb000c
+d21'" > asm.com
[download]

Though it would look less awful if you had used a string output function instead of one-character-at-a-time I/O. And been smaller, too. (Also: eww, DOS.)

Makeshifts last the longest.

Can we also fight over AT&T-style vs Intel-style mnemonics?

Ahhhhh!!! Assembler GOLF! 21 bytes.... OK so I admit I did not try to make assembler look good. I have always liked the thought that C is a language with all the power of assembler, but with all the user friendliness of ..... assembler.

jmp start
msg db "ASM?$"
start:
mov ah,09
mv dx,offset msg
int 21h
mov ah,4ch
mov al,00
int 21h
[download]

cheers

tachyon

Performance-wise, I think some of the functional languages with good compilers could actually be used to accomplish such a feat. It's just that it would be much harder than it is in C (and much more awkward) because when you're dealing with bare-metal type of programming, you're better off using a bare-metal type of programming language.

It's not like there wouldn't be some university types who'd try nonetheless...

Steffem