Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!uunet!brunix!cgy From: cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Segmented Architectures ( formerly Re: 48-bit computers) Message-ID: <70932@brunix.UUCP> Date: 4 Apr 91 21:49:07 GMT References: <1991Apr04.023845.3501@kithrup.COM> <23615@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> <4919@lib.tmc.edu> Sender: news@brunix.UUCP Reply-To: cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) Followup-To: comp.lang.c Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 27 In article <4919@lib.tmc.edu> jmaynard@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard) writes: >In article <23615@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) writes: > >Survey says: Bzzt! > >There's nothing that says that array elements in FORTRAN - or, for that >matter, C - have to be contiguous. Thinking that that must be true as a >matter of Natural Law is purest VAXocentrism. But, in C, you have to be able to move through the array with pointer arithmetic; which means that it is much harder for the compiler to hide, and hence much slower. >It's the compiler's job to hide those details from the programmer. It's >a real tragedy that there ate VAXocentric C programmers out there that >think that the whole world should work the way their specific environment >does, and write software with lots of hard-to-find nonportabilities lurking >to trap the unsuspecting soul who tries to run it on non-VAXen. There are two solutions to this problem: for everyone to write portable code, or for everyone to build flat-addressed machines. I think everyone should be able to see the direction the market is moving in: the latter. This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless you have an unnecessarily Calvinist approach toward the world. Curtis