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Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watmum!cdshaw
From: cdshaw@watmum.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: FLAME!!! Re: EA orthogonality
Message-ID: <126@watmum.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-May-85 03:40:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmum.126
Posted: Mon May 20 03:40:38 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 21-May-85 05:27:20 EDT
References: <419@oakhill.UUCP> <6415@boring.UUCP> <557@terak.UUCP>
Reply-To: cdshaw@watmum.UUCP (Chris Shaw)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 32


| What in heck do you think we users are paying you compiler writers to
| DO?
| 
| The purpose of a CPU is *NOT* to be as easy to write a compiler for as
| possible.
| 
| Why on earth should the design of a CPU be based on how easy it will
| make the jobs of the five people who will write the compilers for it?
| -- 
| Doug Pardee -- Terak Corp. -- !{ihnp4,seismo,decvax}!noao!terak!doug
|                ^^^^^--- soon to be CalComp

All right... then who should the opcodes be designed FOR, on your opinion...
COBOL programmers? FORTRAN programmers ?

I'm sure you've done assembler on an awful machine in your time.. I know I
have assembled for the worst commercially available processors in existence.
The ultimate lesson to be gained from such machines as the 1802, 6502 and Z80
is that orthogonality gains you a very noticeable productivity improvement
when coding in assembler. 

When one is writing a program that codes in assembler (i.e., a compiler), 
orthogonality is a humungous win, because you don't have to code register-use
weirdnesses into your compiler. You don't have to worry about what kind of 
expression you're evaluating when you produce code to do it, etc, etc.

The end result is that the compiler for a ortho machine is more likely right
and is to market faster, all other things being equal.

Chris Shaw    watmath!watmum!cdshaw
University of Waterloo