Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c:8432 comp.lang.misc:1289
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!defun.utah.edu!shebs
From: shebs%defun.utah.edu.uucp@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: The need for D-scussion (was Re: D Wishlist)
Message-ID: <5361@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 88 21:10:28 GMT
References: <12176@brl-adm.ARPA> <1988Mar11.215238.976@utzoo.uucp> <3073@haddock.ISC.COM> <719@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@utah-cs.UUCP
Reply-To: shebs%defun.utah.edu.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 24

In article <719@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:

>[...] It is the use of prefix rather than infix notation
>which makes assembler programming such a chore in 99% of the assemblers.

Gee, and I thought it was the explicit management of registers and memory
that made assembly programming such a chore!  CAL (Cray Assembly Language)
is infix, but I hadn't noticed that it made much difference to anybody.

In case anybody hadn't realized it, this is the same Herman Rubin that's
been calling for "portable assembly languages" for years.  The suggestion
that such a desire is self-contradictory doesn't seem to bother him.
The suggestion that he should try doing this himself is met with a request
for money upfront, with no concrete evidence that the activity would be
useful.  He still doesn't seem to have consulted the literature - reading
a CACM from, say, 1965 is very educational, particularly if you still have
dreams of a "high-level language that allows the programmer to exploit
special machine instructions".  A language like C didn't get designed in
a vacuum, you know - "systems programming languages" was an intensely
studied area in the late 60s, and C just happened to be the winner of those
long-ago battles...

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu