Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: Short Hello World Message-ID: <1991May5.102747.18287@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 5 May 91 10:27:47 GMT References: <1991May2.102554.8679@cs.umu.se> <1991May5.011748.11595@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 29 mykes@amiga0.SF-Bay.ORG (Mike Schwartz) writes: > See my posting in alt.sources.amiga. For some reason, DNews didn't > cross post my reply to Kent's article. xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: [Talking about a short hello world with constant library offset "magic numbers" hard coded in:] >> If you are going to evade higher level languages to worship at the >> altar of code size and speed, you have to work _much_ harder than >> this to equal the high level language's relatively automatic >> maintainability advantage. > Not true. Again, see my posting in alt.sources.amiga. It shows how to > do this program right without losing any automatic anything. But in fact you make my point for me, by writing code that _does_ pay attention to surviving upgrades. By "work harder" I did not mean "write longer code", though yours is, or "press the keys down harder", though if you typed what would have taken me, a fast typist, ten minutes to enter in one minute, your fingers weren't waiting for the upstroke of the keys, but "think a lot harder about maintainability issues", which your code demonstrates you did. Kent, the man from xanth.