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From: brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown)
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: Not again!?  Assembler vs High-Level languages
Message-ID: <3285@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 12-Apr-85 14:33:49 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.3285
Posted: Fri Apr 12 14:33:49 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Apr-85 02:47:16 EST
References: <483@terak.UUCP> <2251@wateng.UUCP> <492@terak.UUCP> <3278@utah-cs.UUCP> <1002@ecsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: brownc@utah-cs.UUCP (Eric C. Brown)
Organization: Univ of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 19

In article <1002@ecsvax.UUCP> hes@ecsvax.UUCP (Henry Schaffer) writes:
>How can any language (I don't know BLISS) produce a smaller program
>than does assembler (assuming a competent assembly programmer)?  I'm
>more interested in HOW than in a discussion of how many
>competent programmers there are.
>--henry schaffer

Well, it does things that any competent programmer could do, such as
global data-flow optimization, constant folding, variable life-death
analysis, and so forth, but it does it over and over again without
a) getting confused or b) breaking the program.  The best description
of the BLISS-11 compiler is "The Design of an Optimizing Compiler", by
Wulf et. al., published by (I believe) American Elsevier.

Eric C. Brown
brownc@utah-cs
..!seismo!utah-cs!brownc

Execute People, not Programs!!