newb questions, hit the hardware or not?

[Thorham]

So did I when I started. That's not an argument - learn it. You might experience something new.  Then make it fast enough. (-;

Yeah, that probably is a bad argument, but it's just not my cup of tea.

Real world software development is hardly ever "doing what you want".

It is when you're doing it as a hobby. Not always, of course. You may end up having to write some things for your project that you don't feel like writing.

GUI systems, in a sense, are not very challenging, and neither very demanding (I wrote one for SDL in a matter of weeks, not months).

I'm talking about the larger projects like Gnome and KDE. These were undoubtedly not written in a couple of weeks.

So, please, let's come up with some projects that have a challenge in it due to their complexity. A GUI system is not that complex (been there, done that).

Perhaps not very complex, but also not very small, and a good, modern GUI system is quite useful at least.

The thing that's most interesting for me to do that's also complex is writing a new OS from scratch. Should be sufficiently challenging.

[Thorham]

You might want to read this:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I never said that I can take on large, complex projects in assembly language by myself and get it right, I said that it's not impossible to do large, complex projects in assembly language and do them properly. Although I'm fairly confident, I'd have to try and see for myself if I could do it or not.

[Thorham]

You don't have any idea what your own or anyone elses ability to achieve it is.

I know we can go to the moon, and drive remote controllable vehicles around on Mars, so I know that human beings have the ability to pull off some damn difficult things, and that's all I need to know. That there are possibilities where others see brick walls. If no one thought anything hard was possible, we'd still be stuck in the stone age. Can I do it? Don't know, haven't tried.

If you read and understood the link I posted then saying it's possible to do it and being fairly confident you could do it yourself is a bad sign for your ability to actually do it.

With fairly confident I meant that I'm fairly confident in my programming ability, and I specifically said that I don't know if I could handle a large, complex project in assembly language by myself. Also, notice the word 'fairly', implying I know that I have some skill. How much? I don't know.

Anyway, all you're trying to say is how things are impossible, and I refuse to think like that, because I know things are not impossible, even though they may be very difficult.

[Thorham]

Yeah, maxtransfer sucks turds. Use IdeFix and never worry about it again.

[Thorham]

Do you know that they spent a lot of money on high level language development so they didn't have to rely on someone writing a complex assembly language for the software for those projects?

You're missing the point.

All I'm saying is that it's possible to handle a large project in assembly language and get it right. Possible, nothing else. In fact, it probably isn't easy. Large projects aren't easy, and assembly language will obviously not make them any easier. Doesn't mean it's impossible. Difficult != impossible.

Furthermore, 68k development is a hobby. As such, choosing assembly language on a 68k system is something you do because you like working in 68k assembly language, not because it's the least difficult or the fastest to develop in.