Minimize Usage of Pseudo-instructions

   Even the Assembly language isn't immune to feature creep.

   The  GNU  Assembler,  and probably many other assemblers, imple-
   ments pseudo-instructions for convenience. In some instances  it
   would  require  manual calculation of an address not to use one.
   For these its justified, because your well on your way to  writ-
   ing human-readable machine code if you don't use them.

   But  many  pseudo-instructions  save no more than a couple lines
   that are easy to write by hand.

   If you only write Assembly when your forced to, as many capital-
   ists  recommend,  then  none of this matters. But if your a pro-
   grammer who writes a lot of Assembly in pursuit of  abusing  his
   computer less, then this is not good, because the convenience it
   provides is outweighed by the knowledge lossed in  the  abstrac-
   tion.

   In  80386  Assembly,  the ENTER and LEAVE pseudo-instruction ex-
   pands to just two instructions which never vary.

     enter
     leave

   is the same as

     push %ebp
     mov %ebp, %esp
     mov %esp, %ebp
     pop %ebp

   These are simple enough to be  implemented  with  a  macro.  Use
   macros  or type the instructions out yourself so you depend less
   on Intel micro code and know what is happening.

   In ARM Assembly there are pseudo-instructions that serve a  sim-
   iliar purpose.

     push {r4, r5}
     pop {r4, r5}

   is the same as:

     stmdb sp!, {r4, r5}
     ldm sp!, {r4, r5}

   Pseudo-instructions  cannot  get much more stupid than this. Not
   only do they not save a line, but you could save  an  additional
   byte per psuedo-instruction by using a macro instead.

   Believe  it or not, theres a pseudo-instruction for a psuedo-in-
   struction in ARM Assembly.  The  LDR  pseudo-instruction  calcu-
   lates  the  PC offset for you; this is good. But you can add an-
   other abstraction on top of that by using the equal sign.

     label:
     .long 0
     ldr r0, =label

   is the same as

     label:
     .long 0
     ldr r0, label_adr
     label_adr:
     .long label

   Here the Assembler generates new labels as if it were a  C  com-
   piler.   This  is  feature creep if I've ever seen it. Write all
   the labels yourself; it isn't hard and it hides less.

   By using only the pseudo-instructions that calculate  addresses,
   you  will  maintain a healthier relationship with your computer.
   All with little effort.
   .