Path: utzoo!dciem!array!colin From: colin@array.UUCP (Colin Plumb) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: TI 99/4 speed (was Re: Register Allocation and Aliasing) Message-ID: <335@array.UUCP> Date: 30 Jul 90 20:43:54 GMT References: <1990Jul24.234511.10564@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us> <65487@sgi.sgi.com> Organization: Array Systems Computing, Inc., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA Lines: 22 In article , jac@paul.rutgers.edu (Jonathan A. Chandross) writes: > > True. But on top of that they made the mistake of getting a Basic from > Microsoft. All of Microsoft's Basics are written (or at least used to > be) in a virtual machine language. All you have to port the Basic is > to write a simulator for that virtual machine. Of course, this adds an > additional layer of indirection and thus seriously slows down your > interpreter. I think you are confusing Microsoft's Basic (assembler) with its applications, which have large parts compiled to a virtual machine p-code optimised for code density. The idea is to pack as many features as possible into 640K and accept the speed penalty as inconsequential in user-interface code. Important internal routines are, of course, compiled to native code. Of course, the fact that most of Microsoft's applications aren't written using normal C compilers means that Microsoft's programmers can't use any of the spiffy commercially-available development tools. This is a non-trivial cost. -- -Colin