• Programmers, rather than users (and purchasers of computer systems), are the beneficiaries of improvements in computer architecture. Faster CPUs allow programmers to write sloppier code while still maintaining the performances levels acceptable on previous generation CPUs.
• Programmers who don't have to work at writing great code, never learn how to write great code (or if they originally knew, their skills atrophy from disuse).

A huge problem today is that many programmers have grown up with high-performance machines and have never learned how to write decent code in the first place. Unfortunately, advances in computer architecture are no longer doubling CPU performance every couple of years as they have in the past. Therefore, today's programmers can no longer get away with writing slow code and expecting advances in computer architecture to rescue them a few years hence.

The Write Great Code series is intended to help rectify this problem by teaching the forgotten art of crafting well-designed, efficient, software.

Volume I: Table of Contents

Chapter 1: What You Need to Know to Write Great Code
Chapter 2: Numeric Representation
Chapter 3: Binary Arithmetic and Bit Operations
Chapter 4: Floating Point Representation
Chapter 5: Character Representation
Chapter 6: Memory Organization and Access
Chapter 7: Composite Data Types and Memory Objects
Chapter 8: Boolean Logic and Digital Design
Chapter 9: CPU Architecture
Chapter 10: Instruction Set Architecture
Chapter 11: Memory Architecture and Organization
Chapter 12: Input and Output (I/O)
Chapter 13: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level
Appendix A: ASCII Character Set

• Download source code from Write Great Code Volume I
  
  
• Errata and other corrections

Unfortunately, coding applications in assembly language is rarely an option for a variety of practical reasons (including the fact that few programmers know assembly language). So a good question to ask might be "Is there some way to write high-level language code to help the compiler produce high-quality machine code?" The answer to this question is "yes" and Write Great Code, Volume II, will teach you how to write such high-level code. This volume in the Write Great Code series describes how compilers translate statements into machine code so that you can choose appropriate high-level programming language statements to produce executable code that is almost as good as hand-optimized assembly code.

Chapter Eight is available as a sample on-line chapter, and you'll also find the links to On-line Appendix A and On-Line Appendix B, below.

Chapter 1: Thinking Low-Level, Writing High-Level
Chapter 2: Shouldn't You Learn Assembly Language?
Chapter 3: 80x86 Assembly for the HLL Programmer
Chapter 4: PowerPC Assembly for the HLL Programmer
Chapter 5: Compiler Operation and Code Generation
Chapter 6: Tools for Analyzing Compiler Output
Chapter 7: Constants and High-Level Languages
Chapter 8: Variables in a High-Level Language
Chapter 9: Array Data Types
Chapter 10: String Data Types
Chapter 11: Pointer Data Types
Chapter 12: Record, Union, and Class Data Types
Chapter 13: Arithmetic and Logical Expressions
Chapter 14: Control Structures and Programatic Decisions
Chapter 15: Iterative Control Structures
Chapter 16: Functions and Procedures
Chapter 17: Engineering Software
Appendix: A Brief Comparison of the 80x86 and PowerPC CPU Families

On-Line Appendix A: The Minimal 80x86 Instruction Set

On-Line Appendix B: The Minimal PowerPC Instruction Set