Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: JLG's flogging of horses (was Re: Relationship between C and C++) Message-ID: Date: 10 Apr 90 19:27:48 GMT References: <9765@yunexus.UUCP> <14320@lambda.UUCP> <1990Apr10.151040.26800@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 19 > I seldom enter this silly discussion - but this has my political > hackles up. Mr. Giles is right here. Mr. Yigit has his terminology wrong - > the people he refers to as "sophisticated" are better described as > "politically correct" members of the elite CS fraternity, those > inhabiting ivory towers. Actually, I think the folks who "need" to get the last fraction of a cycle out of a machine are the ivory-tower elite. Down here in the trenches we can't afford to rewrite all our programs for each new machine every software generation or so. We have to support 68000, 68020, 80286, 80386, VAX, Unisys 1100, and so on. Who know's what's next... Sparc, MIPS, RIOS,... Just going from a 68000 to a 68020 or an 80286 to an 80386 changes everything: all your integers go from 16 bits (most efficient size on a 68000 or 80286) to 32 bits. And that's just an evolutionary change in one processor family. Better to write your code portably and take a small performance hit, so you can go to a new machine tomorrow and quadruple your speed. That mightn't be very satisfying for manic crystalography freaks, but it pays the bills. -- _--_|\ `-_-' Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. . / \ 'U` \_.--._/ v