title: Why do you program in assembly?
body: <p>I have a question for all the hardcore low level hackers out there.  I ran across this sentence in a blog.  I don't really think the source matters (it's Haack if you really care) because it seems to be a common statement.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>For example, many modern 3-D Games have their high performance core engine written in C++ and Assembly.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>As far as the assembly goes - is the code written in assembly because you don't want a compiler emitting extra instructions or using excessive bytes, or are you using better algorithms that you can't express in C (or can't express without the compiler mussing them up)?</p>
  
  <p>I completely get that it's important to understand the low-level stuff.  I just want to understand the <em>why</em> program in assembly after you do understand it.</p>