Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!rutgers!galaxy.rutgers.edu!argus!ken
From: ken@argus.UUCP (Kenneth Ng)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: RISC hard to program?
Message-ID: <1932@argus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jul 90 00:52:14 GMT
References: <40088@mips.mips.COM> <2162@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> <1139@carol.fwi.uva.nl> <9895@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: NJ Instit. of Tech: TEIES Project
Lines: 23

In article <9895@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, lindsay@MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay) writes:
: It's good for portability to develop code on the _least_ forgiving
: machine that you can find.
[edit]
: In general, the best way to develop portable code is to force the 
: original development to happen on two machines at once.  This means 
: that the original team is still there during that crucial first port.
: Plus, portability issues can surface _before_ the design is frozen.

Agreed, and do it on as drastically different machines as you possibly
can.  Two word default integer and four word default integer and integers
stored big and little endin as examples.  If you really want to take a bruising
try an EBCDIC and ASCII machine :-).

The only thing I don't like about this approach is that you have to live with
the poorest machine/os/compiler implementations you want to run your software
on.  


-- 
Kenneth Ng: Post office: NJIT - CCCC, Newark New Jersey  07102
uucp !andromeda!galaxy!argus!ken *** NOT ken@bellcore.uucp ***
bitnet(prefered) ken@orion.bitnet  or ken@orion.njit.edu