assuming you reach that "theoretical" stage where FASM has no bugs or errors, there are plenty of great examples, and both 16-, 32-, and 64-bit support are complete, ready, etc, what will the next step be to improving FASM? Maybe add special features such as new types of macros, etc? Just wondering...

I'm just wondering what FASM will be like in the future. I imagine someday, a 128-bit or 256-bit or something similar, FASM, for 128-bit or 256-bit processors. But when there is nothing left to do what will FASM be doing then? I ask because I noticed a lot of languages have evolved over the years. MASM and TASM were almost kind of high level, then C came along, and people improve on it and make it better... C keeps evolving. What about FASM? I don't belive and I don't want there to ever be a "high-level" FASM (if such a thing is even possible) but when there's nothing left to do, then what? Just wondering... I would be helping with FASM coding if I knew how, but it's too complex for me to understand.

FASM is a tool. There is nothing wrong about reaching perfection and stopping.
I'm sure you use your fork and knife even though their basic design haven't changed in the last 250 years.

About your original question, most likely someone will develop a new assembler just like NASM and FASM were developed becuse someone decided the existing tools were not enough.


What would make is easier for you to understand and get involved? Pointing out those obsticles is EXACTLY the kind of thing that can make FASM better.

I'm not really experienced in that kind of thing. I don't even know precisely what "parser" means, though I assume it's something like "language analyzer." The FASM code is fine, and I understand a lot of it, I just don't understand most of it. The other problem, I think, is that in order to understand what a certain section of code does, you probably have to understand what several other sections do. Comments are few, and although labels are descriptive, it's hard to tell what something means. For example, unless you can take this in context, you have no clue what it means:

expression_checked:
mov al,bl
jmp logical_value_ok

And to take it in context, you have to read everything else. In order to understand why we are copying bl into al, we have to understand what value is in BL, and why that value is important, and why it needs to be copied into AL. This becomes obvious when you look at the source code and work with the source code closely (like Privavlov does) but unless you have a lot of time to expirament and try things out, it becomes very difficult to do that sort of thing- I don't have time to do this, so I don't understand FASM. I'm not saying that FASM Sourcecode is bad- just hard for me to understand.

BTW, I like your tool (forks, spoons, and knives) analogy, although there may be some major changes to forks and knives and spoons in the near future... who knows?

But I am guessing that FASM will have to evolve- we are now having 64-bit computers and 64-bit FASM is being worked on- by 1.64, we should have a complete 64-bit FASM. So I'm wondering, what else will there be to do after that? I am guessing that in 10-20 years we'll have 128-bit computers, though we probably do not need them (64 bits- isn't that enough?), and if that happens, FASM may evolve once again, as 64-bit becomes "legacy" (hard to imagine, eh? Remember 16-bit becoming legacy? ). Maybe by then Privalov will retire, and someone else will take over. I pray the day will never come when nobody cares about FASM to work on it, but I do imagaine a day coming when noone will need to.

I don't imagine us needing 256-bit computers (in 50 or 100 years people will quote me saying that as the 1024-bit computers are coming out ), but if I'm right, then all development will go towards making computers smaller and faster, rather than making more bits availible. So in that regard, FASM may eventually come to a rest.

So, to sum it all up, my one argument against FASM being like a fork is that if food changed radically, then so would forks. And so until processors stop changing radically, FASM probably will change too- unless Privalov and the others give up on FASM and stop its development so they can retire.