Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!munnari.oz.au!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!ditmela!latcs1!stephens
From: stephens@latcs1.oz.au (Philip J Stephens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: languages used with commercial software
Message-ID: <7509@latcs1.oz.au>
Date: 26 Mar 90 11:51:29 GMT
References: <9003232001.AA00592@apple.com> <12423@smoke.BRL.MIL> <7494@latcs1.oz. <1990Mar25.210033.14719@world.std.com>
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 35

In article <1990Mar25.210033.14719@world.std.com>, spike@world.std.com (Joe Ilacqua) writes:
> In article <14615@fs2.NISC.SRI.COM> cwilson@NISC.SRI.COM (Chan Wilson) writes:
> <       (4)   Coding in assembly is _always_ faster.
> 
>         Now if we are talking 'assembly on Apple{//,][}s' then I might
> agree with you.  But in general modern compilers are fast, and some
> even product faster code.  A compiler is able to view to hole program
> a once and can often make much more far reaching optimizations than
> most programers.

  This is rather doubtful.  Most compiler optimisation concentrates on
assigning registers for calculations, and removing all of the unnecessary and
duplicate assembly instructions.  Overall global optimisation is _extremely_
difficult to achieve, and compilers that perform such optimisation tend to be
somewhat buggy.  
  Compilers don't view the whole program at once.  Optimisation tends to be
local rather than global, since in order to achieve higher levels of
optimisation the compiler must _know_ what the program is doing.  
  It seems to me that most programmers ought to be write better code than a
compiler; generally assembly programmers tend to write very wieldy code simply
because it takes less effort!  Look at any 6502 program in Nibble and you'll
see what I mean.

  Modern compilers on an Apple cannot hope to produce faster code than pure
assembly.  Compilers on minicomputers is a different story, since the machine
is damn fast anyhow, and nobody wants to write in assembly language on a
UNIX machine (let's face it, C is bad enough :-)  I doubt whether a high-level
language compiler can be written for an Apple that generates code that is
faster than assembly language.

</\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\></\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\>
<  Philip J. Stephens                ><   "Many views yield the truth."        >
<  Hons. student, Computer Science   ><   "Therefore, be not alone."           >
<  La Trobe University, Melbourne    ><          - Prime Song of the viggies   >
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