Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: It looks like he's at it again! Message-ID: <.KK48.8@xds13.ferranti.com> Date: 10 Jul 90 15:24:44 GMT References: <2328@l.cc.purdue.edu> <1990Jul10.072443.4844@cs.UAlberta.CA> <63692@sgi.sgi.com> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Distribution: comp.arch Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 20 In article <63692@sgi.sgi.com> karsh@trifolium.sgi.com (Bruce Karsh) writes: > Ah, the Computer Science Religion again. It's blasphemy to talk about > using assembly code to speed up programs. No. In fact using assembly code for the top 5% if it's doing something that would benefit from assembly coding is perfectly all right. Redesigning all our HLLs so they can represent operations like that, or putting all possibly useful opcodes in all processors, isn't. If you need specialised opcodes, get a coprocessor. > because the anti-assembly forces don't really have a good case - just a > set of beliefs? What "anti-assembly forces"? Use the right tool for the job. Sometimes it's a hammer. Just make sure it *is* the right tool. There's no point in writing your whole program in assembly... hell, if space is that critical use Forth! Then find the top 5% and speed *that* up... but keep the original code around. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180.