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From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Assembly Language
Message-ID: <476@sugar.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Aug-87 09:08:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: sugar.476
Posted: Thu Aug 13 09:08:11 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Aug-87 12:02:12 EDT
References: <892@edge.UUCP>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 22
Summary: Talk about people missing the point...
Xref: mnetor comp.misc:1029 comp.sys.amiga:7465

All of you people flaming me (and flaming the people flaming the people
flaming me (and so on)) are totally missing the point. What I said was:

	"Don't express algorithms in assembly language."

What most people seem to have seen is:

	"Don't use assembly language."

That's (as many people have rightly pointed out) like saying "don't drive
pickup trucks because cars handle better". Sometimes you need a pickup.
Sometimes you need assembly. Mostly, however, all you get from the pickup
or the assembly language is a sense of glowing accomplishment at identifying
with the working class (in the case of the pickup) or the old-time hackers
who didn't have anything better (in the case of the assembler).

In any case da Silva's law #0x7FFE is still valid. When you are describing an
algorithm you should be concentrating on clarity rather than hack value. you
want to use the highest level code available. Unless the algorithm you're
trying to explain is Forth's inner interpreter... then use PDP-11 assembly.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter (I said, NO PHOTOS!)