Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 22:47:37 +0000 From: Daniela <dgw@liwest.at> To: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Most wanted Message-ID: <200403052247.37202.dgw@liwest.at> In-Reply-To: <20040305200825.N38020@haldjas.folklore.ee> References: <Pine.LNX.4.43.0403011839470.3269-100000@pilchuck.reedmedia.net> <200403051855.35905.dgw@liwest.at> <20040305200825.N38020@haldjas.folklore.ee>
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On Friday 05 March 2004 18:41, Narvi wrote: > [only follow up to chat, please] > > On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, Daniela wrote: > > It would be faster to write and maintain (at least for most people), but > > it > > It is faster to write and maintainable (full stop). > > > would not run faster. C is fine for projects other than fast, small > > libraries. I also like shellscript, but only if speed and size are not > > critical. > > Whetever it would run faster or not is in *MOST* cases not even debatable > - in most cases, the compiler will generate faster code. Also, when say > using SSE2 for fp becomes faster than x87 fp, you can simply recompile, > instead of having to re-write your code. If your asm is good, it is going > to be scheduled for the processor - again, in some time there will be new > processors for which fats code is scheduled differently. I know, by experience, that my code is always much faster than the compiler-generated code. > > I have not even written a million code lines yet, as I'm only 16 years > > old and have one and a half year of programming experience. But I love > > that low-level stuff so much that I already think in ASM. > > See, in 3 years you are probably 2x as good as you are now at > understanding of how computers work, what makes something fast (or not) > than now. Most of the asm code will in the process turn out to be not > worth the bother, while some of C might be salvagable, esp glue. I hope that I will soon understand computers better, as that's after all one of my main reasons for participating in such discussions. At least I have the will to learn something. Of course, I don't bother optimizing code where I will not be able to get a great improvement. But I'm only a hobby programmer now, so most of the time I don't even bother writing programs that can't be optimized well. I also like C and shellscript and Lisp and numerous other scripting languages very much, and sometimes I even write software that the user actually interacts with, but I simply like ASM optimization best. I also love Intercal, but I don't write real software in it. Intercal is just for fun, and ASM is just for optimization (and device drivers).
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