From owner-freebsd-chat Tue May 9 14:24:52 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from haldjas.folklore.ee (Haldjas.folklore.ee [193.40.6.121]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C88937C329 for ; Tue, 9 May 2000 14:24:08 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee) Received: from localhost (narvi@localhost) by haldjas.folklore.ee (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA27611; Tue, 9 May 2000 23:03:37 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee) Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 23:03:37 +0200 (EET) From: Narvi To: David Scheidt Cc: J McKitrick , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: assembly vs C In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Tue, 9 May 2000, David Scheidt wrote: > On Tue, 9 May 2000, J McKitrick wrote: > > > I've heard some debates recently, mostly by 'old-school' hackers from the > > C64 days who are calling for a return to machine language. They claim that > > CPU speed, memory size, and HD space will begin to plateau soon, and that ML > > would bring a much needed return to efficiency and clean coding. > > Anybody who thinks that assembly is going to make a big comeback hasn't > looked at writing code for modern processors. While there are people who > can produce code that is as efficent as the stuff cranked out by a good > compiler, there aren't that many. There aren't nearly as many as there were > during the era of the 6502 and the Z-80. The compilers have gotten much > better and the chips much harder to write code for. I am sure that assembly > will stick around for a while, for things like low-level OS glue, and the > occaisonal tightly optimized loop. I can't imagine anyone writing a large > application in assembly for the Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, or IA-64. > You are on a really slippery road, betting against the stupidity of humans... > David > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message