Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!husc6!ogccse!blake!mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: another PDP-10 benefit to Lisp
Message-ID: <3455@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 1 Sep 89 14:21:20 GMT
Sender: news@blake.acs.washington.edu
Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
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     I doubt people today would consider it a benefit, but another
PDP-10 benefit which definitely affected Lisp implementations was the
fact that it was a uniquely pleasurable architecture to write assembly
code.  Consequently, many bright hackers would hand-code large and
quite efficient assembly language programs for the PDP-10, including
Lisp kernels, in preference to higher-level languages.  It was almost
always possible to hand-code an assembly program for the PDP-10, in
the same (or less!) time to do the same job as a higher-level language
program.

     Of course, compilers today are much better and "modern" machine
architectures are definitely *not* pleasurable to code in assembly.
Also, the PDP-10 experience with lock-in to a single hardware vendor
was perhaps the best argument that Unix has ever had.

Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2020
mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU / MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil / (206) 842-2385
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