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From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Any reasons for using C on a PC (is it the fastest thing around?)?
Message-ID: <8704161934.AA01251@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Thu, 16-Apr-87 14:34:39 EST
Article-I.D.: cory.8704161934.AA01251
Posted: Thu Apr 16 14:34:39 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 19-Apr-87 06:30:01 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
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	A project I worked on 2 summers ago involved writing a pc-based
telemetry system, approximately 15000 lines of C code.  It would have been
impossible to do in assembly for several reasons.  (1) It would have been
about 40000 lines of assembly. (2) The sourece would have been unreadable due 
to the large number of structures in the system.  (3) The assembly would have
been extremely messy because the program references a helofalot more than
64K of data.  (5) It would have taken 8 months instead of 3 to write.
(6) It would be difficult to make major modifications if it had not been 
written in C.

	As it turned out, I still needed about 200 lines of assembly for the
serial, parallel, and real-time clock drivers.

	In that particular project, speed was not a problem area.  Compiled
C code on 808x systems is usually between 1.5 and 2 times slower than
equivalent handcoded assembly, but it depends on the compiler.

				-Matt