this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago (3 children)

No, it is wrong. Machine code is not source code.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

And even if you had the source code it may not necessarily qualify as open source.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

well assembly is technically "source code" and can be 1:1 translated to and from binary, excluding "syntactic sugar" stuff like macros and labels added on top.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But those things you're excluding are the most important parts of the source code...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

By excluded he means macro assemblers which in my mind do qualify as an actual langauge as they have more complicated syntax than instruction arg1, arg2 ...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

The code is produced by the compiler but they are not the original source. To qualify as source code it needs to be in the original language it was written in and a one for one copy. Calling compiler produced assembly source code is wrong as it isn't what the author wrote and their could be many versions of it depending on architecture.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Never heard of a decompiler I see.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A decompiler doesnt give you access to the comments, variable names, which is an important part of every source code

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Meanwhile, AI is having a heyday with it...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.09029

[–] newIdentity 14 points 2 years ago (3 children)

A decompiler won't give you the source code. Just some code that might not even necessarily work when compiled back.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago

From the point of view of the decompiler machine code is indeed the source code though

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 years ago

And? Decompilers aren't for noobs. So what if it gives you variable and function names like A000, A001, etc?

It can still lead a seasoned programmer where to go in the raw machine code to mod some things.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Try converting from English to Japanese and back to English.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

A fancy way to say do nothing is not the same as translating back and forth. Example: Show me the intermediate translation.

Also we live in a 64bit world now old man

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
GF2P8AFFINEINVQB xmm1, xmm2, 10
[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

Also that instruction does not do nothing, it resets the CPU register to zero without having to access RAM. Far from a NOP instruction.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Still not the actual source code, bucko.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

No, it's actually better when you can read the machine code.

Most folks don't care to recompile the whole thing when all they wanna do is bypass the activation and tracker shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Having access to the source code actually makes reading machine code easier, so you're also wrong on this entirely different thing you're going on about.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I never said disassembly or decompiling was easier in any way. I'll agree with you on that, it's way more difficult.

Back to the point of the meme though, if you can read assembly, you can read it all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You've never actually compared source code to its compiled output, have you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

I've written drivers in 65 bytes of code. I don't tend to use high level languages that hide what's going on behind the scenes.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You've clearly never used a disassembler such as HIEW have you? You get the entire breakdown of the assembly code.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I disassemble binaries daily for work. It's still not the same as source code.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

I didn't say it was. I just said loosely what the OG meme said, if you know how to read assembly, you know how to read (and write) what some of the code does.