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From: gary@softway.oz (Gary Corby)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth
Subject: Flammable question
Message-ID: <2747@softway.oz>
Date: 21 Mar 90 03:04:48 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Softway Pty Ltd, Sydney, Australia
Lines: 18

I may regret asking this, but here goes.  I notice that in
many comp.lang.forth postings there is a distinct tendency
to criticise other languages because of procedure call
overhead.  Now I would be the first to agree that overhead
is to be avoided where possible, but is it not taking things
a little too far to say C is too slow?  If that's how you
feel about C, what do you have to say about Pascal, or Ada?

There are still some systems around that need every CPU
cycle squeezed from them, but they are now the vast
minority.  If your application is too slow on a Z80
processor, go buy a 386 box.  This doesn't mean I condone
sloppy programming, but it does mean I favour clarity of
code over efficiency for all but a few time-critical applications.
-- 
Gary Corby  (Friend of Elvenkind)			Softway Pty Ltd
						ACSnet: gary@softway.oz
					UUCP: ...!uunet!softway.oz!gary