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, 18 Aug 1992 05:26:36 GMT

In article <id.6WFS.0NK@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <1992Aug16.074623.2955@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> In article <id.NZDS.UCE@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
>> >In article <1992Aug14.081326.24359@news.columbia.edu> lasner@watsun.cc.columbia.edu (Charles Lasner) writes:
>> >> This gets to the heart of the matter: hll programmers depend on the compiler
>> >> to do "magic" of various hues and colors for them; for most of them, they
>> >> haven't a clue as to what's going on,
>
>> >I take it you include Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, Niclaus Wirth, and
>> >myself in this. [...]
>
>> Putting yourself into that category could be interpreted as misplaced macho.
>> [...] I said *most* users of hll.  If you put yourself in the category of
>> the people whose names you used, then you are proving my point:  There are
>> possibly as few as 5 people who actually have a clue as to what a compiler
>> is doing for them in any detailed way; for the rest, who are apparently a
>> huge ignorant horde that *you* want to distance yourself from, they likely
>> know little to none about what's going on under the hood.
>
>You're putting words into my mouth. I included myself in the list because I'm
>*not* a programming demigod. There aren't "possibly as few as 5 people" who
>have a clue... I could come up with that many personal friends who have done
>enough real work with but a moment's reflection. So could you, if you quit
>hanging around in academia and checked out a few real-time shops. I know a guy
>who sat down and wrote an O/S for the Z80 in 100% PL/M, and it ran first time.
>I can't imagine doing that in assembly.

a)	I am not in academia; I am a guest here; I'm a Kermit author (100% in
assembly as if you'd be surprised), and most of my commercial work is done
on off-the-net machines.

b)	I think academia would resent your slur, although I am no fan of
academia per se; we established that a few months ago.

c)	I've done that about 8-9 times including the part about running the
first time (that it was done, assembly-error free, and perused a reasonable
amount of time to get rid of obvious problems.)  I don't see a connection
between academia and lack of real-time, or is that an oblique reference to
money versus theoretical, because I've done both.

>
>I'm not distancing myself from the horde, I'm part of it. The horde isn't as
>ignorant as you'd like to make out.

I think others may have differing opinions about the statistics behind that.
I offered an open challenge for someone to quantify how many bugs they might
attribute to various language-based implementations of any code released by
any author on any basis, to rate the use of the various languages as that
pertains to reliability of product.  I don't see anyone challenging my
opinion that C would come in dead last.  I would think that writing buggy
code in C qualifies at least in part as not knowing what goes on under
the hood so to speak.  Presumably all of these "experts" you claim exist 
(aren't they "experts" since they aren't as ignorant as I make out?) had
full access to all of the associated wonderful development tools to 
eliminate all known problems, etc., so if so, then why the failing grade?

I have friends who are of the opinion that C is more like a demented
macro assembler being misused with the "wrong" macroes, but I won't let
my personal friends bias the count here.

cjl
Xref: sparky alt.folklore.computers:12602 comp.lang.misc:2728