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From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: Not again!?  Assembler vs High-Level languages
Message-ID: <5461@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Apr-85 05:45:35 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5461
Posted: Thu Apr 11 05:45:35 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Apr-85 05:45:35 EST
References: <483@terak.UUCP> <2251@wateng.UUCP>, <492@terak.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 13

The great problem with assembler is that once you get the sucker working,
you never want to touch it again. The linear sort that was just fine
when you were sorting 5 elements is going to be intolerably slow when
you search 500,000 elements -- but do you *really* want to write
quicksort in (let's pick a horrid example) pdp-8 assembler?

I have mostly used assembler, not when I needed something *fast* as
when I needed something *real small*. But there it is easy -- write the
code in C, produce the assembler and then tighten that. (but not on the
pdp-8, though. I don't think there *is* a C compiler for the pdp-8)

Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura