Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) Subject: Re: 8-bit death Message-ID: <1991May30.145207.23572@sugar.hackercorp.com> Organization: Sugar Land Unix -- Houston, TX References: <1991May27.130057.27121@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: Thu, 30 May 1991 14:52:07 GMT In article melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > Just ftp to prep.ai.mit.edu and grab some GNU software and > see how many machines the software runs on(some of it is more portable > than others). If GNU Smalltalk or Bison were written in assembler, > how easy would it be to port them to a dozen different machines? And keep in mind that most of the GNU software out there is extremely bad code from the point of view of portability. RMS has a great deal of disdain for 16 bit machines, and none of this code was written with any idea of ever porting it to anything less than a VAX. This is true of both RMS code, and the code of the other people in the FSF... the attitude has proven contagious. So when Mike here is pointing to the GNU code as "portable", keep in mind that what he's pointing to is not any sort of ideal. It's just typical C code. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' .