Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!caen!uwm.edu!psuvax1!hsdndev!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: Re- HLLs vs. Assembly
Message-ID: <15743@smoke.brl.mil>
Date: 7 Apr 91 01:37:27 GMT
References: <Joe_Luzzi.FULLERTON_CC@QMBRIDGE.CALSTATE.EDU> <9104060651.AA18946@apple.com> <1991Apr6.100927.21953@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 33

In article <1991Apr6.100927.21953@nntp-server.caltech.edu> toddpw@nntp-server.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel) writes:
>P.S. maybe Doug Gwyn will tell us how much his computers cost and what super
>studly software they are running, so we can all run out and buy it and never
>use assembler again...

I personally have an 8MB Apple IIGS with TWGS and FPE, but certainly none
of my usual applications require resources like that.  I used to run some
of them on a 128KB Apple //e.  I do have one application under development
that will need most of these resources.  (It would be folly to develop it
in assembler since I may migrate to an IBM PC/AT clone some day just to be
able to obtain a decent selection of commercial applications for other
purposes -- I don't want to have to write EVERYthing myself!)

BRL has a variety of different computers, most of them perfectly ordinary.
Sun-3s predominate, with a lot of SGI Iris workstations and file servers.
There are still a few VAXes, Gould PowerNodes, and Alliant FX/8s in service;
our PDP-11s have mostly been converted into network gateway processors.
We do have two Crays, and X-MP/48 and a Cray-2, but most of use seldom if
ever use the Crays, which are administered on a "central site" philosophy
rather than in the open manner that the other computers are.  All systems
run some version of UNIX, all are networked (there is a separate network
for classified traffic), and most applications are available on all systems.
Most regular users have bitmap graphics interfaces, at least.  All major
applications of which I am aware are coded in either Fortran or C, with
occasional examples of heavy use of UNIX tools in shell scripts.  We
have long considered typical IBM PCs to be "toy" computers, primarily
because of the incredibly inept way they are utilized rather than because
of their theoretical level of computing power.

Note that occasionally code originally developed on a Cray-2 finds its
way to my Apple IIGS.  I assure you that it would not do so if it had
been coded in assembler, and probably it would never have done the needed
job even on the Cray-2.