From: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Subject: Re: The need for an assembler (was: Favorite CPU)
Reply-To: lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 10:17:33 GMT

In article <id.VZ2T.XJA@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>In article <1992Sep8.101302.16606@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> Depending on the application, it may be pointless to use anything less
>> than 100% assembly or 100% C.  I never claimed anything less.  But what I
>> did claim is that assembler is underutilized, and that often projects are
>> clumsily written in hll, in the sense that assembler could do portions a
>> whole lot better.
>
>I don't believe that. My experience is that assembly is heavily overutilised
>in the real world. There may be a few cases where a HLL is used where assembly
>could do the job better... even better enough to justify making the resulting
>software nonportable... but they're way overshadowed by all the cases where
>some hairy-chested hacker has used assembly simply because it's cool.

You have already shown that your experience may be skewed, so don't use
"not invented here" arguments.  The assembly people I refer to hardly meet
the description you ascribe to them.  If this is your idea of an assembly
person, I suggest that *all* of there code is overutilized, regardless of
language, as the project is better off without them.

>
>> Further, certain trade-offs of performance may dictate the direction of
>> how much is enough, so I would never rule out 100% assembler.  The MS-DOS
>> Kermit example probably need not be 100% so, but considering that the 
>> alternative would be to tie the product to the folly of the C-based Kermits,
>
>What folly? The C based kermits are very successful.

No they're not; they have incredible bugs, and far more than the MS-DOS
version in 100% assembler.  Moreover, that's the situation *today* whereas
it has been steadily getting better; or would you have all of the MS-DOS users
wait 5 years for something that really works until just about now, or hopefully
in the near future when the count is manageable.

>
>> Programs aren't written for machismo, they're written to satisfy engineering
>> considerations in implementing systems.
>
>If that was the case then I strongly doubt the 486 would have retained an 8086
>compatibility mode.

I have no idea what that means.  Compatibility is retained for upward
compatibility reasons.  If the small model is the proper one for the job,
you use it, if not, use another one, period.

>
>> Your point is pointless machismo.
>
>Moi?

Yes, you made an unfounded remark merely to make a remark.

>
>> DOS improvement considerations are unrelated to an hll versus assembler 
>> argument.
>
>No, it's not. What keeps DOS from improving isn't because DOS is written in
>assembly... I've even noted that's reasonable... it's because if it's changed
>significantly all the badly-behaved programs, mostly written in assembly, will
>break.

Wrong, compatibility is compatibility, and is unrelated to an hll versus
assembler argument.  You could write DOS in C if you wanted, as long as
you maintained compatibility.  It is noteworthy that Microsoft has tried
to do this in the socalled DOS compatibility box of OS/2, which is written in
C, and it's quite incompatible, but trying.  BTW, IBM OS/2 seems to have
fixed a lot of the bugs.

>-- 
>Peter da Silva                                               `-_-'
>Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp.                                    'U` 
>Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012
>+1 713 274 5180                                   Har du kramat din varg idag?

cjl


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