Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!otter.hpl.hp.com!hpltoad!cdollin!kers From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Compilers and efficiency Message-ID: Date: 14 May 91 07:15:05 GMT References: <9782@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <653@ctycal.UUCP> <28297C23.6984@tct.com> <12216@mentor.cc. Sender: news@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK. Lines: 40 In-Reply-To: rwa@cs.athabascau.ca's message of 13 May 91 16:15:23 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: cdollin.hpl.hp.com Ross Alexander says: [quoting Herman Rubin] >To clarify, I meant the specific ability to place the transmission in low gears. But the auto transmission knows when to do that for you. My experience with manual gears [in Britain] vs automatic gears [America, much less experience] is ``knows when to do that for you'' is an overstatement. Using one allows the operator to concentrate on an appropriate problem domain - keeping the vehicle out of the ditch. Is this a matter of fact, or of plausible opinion? I'm less aware of changing gear [in my car my car] than I am of an automatic mishandling gear changes - that is to say, it [the former] happens, but not very often. Why are you so d*mned eager to second guess this mechanism, and divert your attention from the thing that, compared to the machinery, you do well (guidance)? He then adds All these arguements can be moved back into the computer architecture discussion with remarkably little rephrasing, I might add. Well, I'd agree, but perhaps with the opposite sign! I usually disagree with Herman on architecture; but it seems to me that the car geraing analogy is all in his favour. Perhaps, if we wish to use this analogy, we should find a part of the car more suitaed to our purposes ... One of the Rules for System Design [the authors name I recall with enough uncertainty to be to embarrassed to attempt to write here] was ``don't hide power''. Isn't this applicable here? [The Rule doesn't say ``go out of your way to provide power in the form the use would most like'', of course.] -- Regards, Kers. | "You're better off not dreaming of the things to come; Caravan: | Dreams are always ending far too soon."