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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!zben
From: zben@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Un-alignment in structures
Message-ID: <466@umd5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Apr-85 05:36:51 EST
Article-I.D.: umd5.466
Posted: Mon Apr  8 05:36:51 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Apr-85 03:49:12 EST
References: <230@tellab2.UUCP> <135@mit-athena.UUCP>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: U of Md, CSC, College Park, Md
Lines: 22
Summary: Man time vs Machine time

> In article <120@mit-athena.UUCP> jc@mit-athena.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>                       ...After all, what does it gain a man
>to save a millisecond of his computer's time if he loses an hour
>of his own time thereby?

First off, lets make the sort of rash assumption that the machine time and
the human time cost the same.  Machine time has traditionally been much more
expensive than human time (I sure as h*ll don't get $300 an hour) but recent
history has machine costs dropping like crazy and it simplifies the analysis.

Now, the question you have to ask is: "Will this code be executed more than
60 * 60 * 1000 times over the lifetime of this program?".  If it will, then
it is surely worth your hour of time to tighten it up.  If it will not, then
why bother...

I see the point as being: "why cruftify the source program to do structure
access manually (to program around alignment issues) when you could have the
compiler do it automatically, error free :-), and leave the source code in a
state that a mere mortal can read, understand, and modify..."

-- 
Ben Cranston  ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben  zben@umd2.ARPA