Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!necntc!ima!johnl
From: johnl@ima.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Assemblers
Message-ID: <816@ima.ISC.COM>
Date: 20 Dec 87 02:20:18 GMT
Sender: johnl@ima.ISC.COM
Reply-To: haddock!uunet!watmath!looking!brad (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 38
Approved: compilers@ima.UUCP
In-Reply-To: <802@ima.ISC.COM>


Dale Worley writes:
>Assembler is still important, and its supporting tools should be as
>rich as those for an HLL, but the area in which it can be economically
>uses is gradually shrinking.

Shrinking, indeed, but still most of the market.  The following programs
all have two things in common:
	a) Lotus 1-2-3
	b) Microsoft Basic
	c) MS-DOS
	d) dBase II
	e) Turbo Pascal

Those two things are:
	1) They are the most widely used programs in the world, and
	2) They're all written in assembler
And a third thing is:
	3) They wouldn't have become #1 if not for #2

Some of these products are migrating to HLLs, and some products could be
on the list because they became popular while in assembler, and then migrated.

The list is shrinking, but we should still remember that today, in terms
of customer demand, most software is written in assembler.  So it is
surprising that assembler tools aren't better, and it's also interesting
that for all the advances in compiler technology, assembler programs still
dominate.
---
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
[I note that all of these programs run on micros; how much important mainframe
software is still in assembler?  I gather that PARS/ACP, the airline system,
still is because of its extraordinary performance requirements, e.g. handling
1000 transactions/second, but is anything else?  -John]
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