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From: bobc@tikal.UUCP (Bob Campbell)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: structured assembler
Message-ID: <348@tikal.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Feb-86 12:07:48 EST
Article-I.D.: tikal.348
Posted: Fri Feb 14 12:07:48 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 05:56:26 EST
References: <350@3comvax.UUCP> <463@kontron.UUCP> <1078@mmintl.UUCP> <454@ho95e.UUCP> <409@3comvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: bobc@tikal.UUCP (Bob Campbell)
Distribution: net
Organization: Teltone Corp., Kirkland, WA
Lines: 74

Sorry but I have to put in my 2 cents (or given the cost of transmitting
this 2 dollars) worth.

In article <409@3comvax.UUCP> mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>I agree that 'C' makes a good "prototyping" language - you might be able
>to formulate a program fairly quick.  However, I believe that user-
>friendliness has become a big issue in the software world, and that
>a speedy program that takes less resources is much friendlier than the
>'C' equivalent.

I don't agree that 'C' is a good prototyping language, as there are many
languages that provide faster Build/Debug/Rebuild cycles, and better
debugging tools.  However most of these languages (lisp, smalltalk, icon,
snobal,...) are interpreted.  Interpreted languages have in most cases the
advantages of less effort to create and run the program (no linkers loader
etc), better run time checking, and in some cases the code can be modifed
and a test restarted where it failed.  The cost of interpreted languages
is at run time where the system runs much slower, but in some cases this
is ok as most of the time is spent waiting for user input.

As for friendlier, that is a releative (and also abused used term),  to
some people friendlier means faster, to other's friendlier means easier
to understand and use, and to yet others friendlier means easier to
modify.

>...  Why not have an assembler with data structures?
>IBM has one for the IBM PC...

With only a little effort most assemblers can create psuedo structures
using equates, or on MVS or CMS the assembler supports dummy psects
which can be used to generate record structures.

>I agree that people time is very important, but not programmer time.

This is not true, for example Teltone (where I work) is in hot water
because the system we are producing is not on time (two years late).
Many of the early mistakes we in the area of optimizing things which
we did not understand.  About a year ago Management noticed that they
were in big trouble, and modified the climite such that it was most
important to get the code done on time and insure that it was correct,
many of the optimization efforts of the past were discarded.  Large
parts of the system were discarded, and it appear that most of the
problems that happened since that time would not have happened if
we could have used a Higher Level Lanuage than 'C', something like
modula-2 or ada.

>If a program is worth being used by many people, I don't see how it is
>any advantage to write it in 'C' (other than portability).

Most the code at teltone runs on three different machines (VAX 750s,
PDP11/23, and Pyramid 90x) we can not afford to maintain three assembler
version of every program we write.  It is quickest to write and debug
code on the pyramid.

>...the first (I learn from my mistakes...)  Writing a program in 'C'
>first, then recoding in Assembler sounds a lot better to me than just
>the 'C' version.  
Sounds like grunt work to me.

>...programmer does, he probably wastes a minute or two.  In 1 year, how
>many man hours are lost throughout the country just running grep?
JUST THINK HOW MANY MAN YEARS ARE SAVED USING GREP.  Why should I have
to scan 100 page stacks of printsouts looking for references to the
variable TRACER_RECORD.ESEQ.  If the answer is I should know my own
code sorry but it was not my code to begin with.

I will not get into the MAC is slow, MS-DOS is better etc; debate, I
like my Mac, and would only trade it in for a sun, or a Xerox Machine
(amiga is real close).

Bob Campbell
LanguagesRUS
Save the world abolish assemblers :-) :-)
{uw-beaver,fluke,hplsla,dataio}!tikal!bobc