Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: C versus Assembly, which one?
Message-ID: <56707@sun.uucp>
Date: 15 Jun 88 21:35:26 GMT
References: <312@pedro.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 54

In article <312@pedro.UUCP> pete_ashdown@pedro.UUCP (Pete Ashdown) writes:
> Thanks for your suggestions.  I may just turn back to examining 'C'.  I
> have already done program #1 to some extent in assembly.  Should I turn
> back to 'C' or should I keep going with assembly?  I'd be curious to
> find out from other 68000 assembly programmers (like Mark R.) how they
> got started. If they went from 'C' to assembly or just started out in
> assembly.

Well whether to program in C or Assembly or Modula-2 for that matter depends
on some of the parameters of the project. Anyone who is serious about systems
programming/design should probably learn several languages if only to get
through the nuances of 
	"do {statement} while (expr);" 
and 
	"REPEAT BEGIN statement END UNTIL expr;"

And into the concepts of loops that check their parameters at the end of
the loop versus loops that check their parameters before executing the loop
etc. 

Once you understand programming at that level, using any given language is
simply a vocabulary switch. Then you can decide what language to use based
on it's other strengths. These being generally classed into the groups 
such as readability, efficiency, maintence, and time to completion.

Using C, Assembly, and Modula-2 as examples I break them down as follows :

C provides a 'minimalist' high level language, interfaces between modules
are provided but only loosely enforced, details of actual register usage
is abstracted although it can still be influenced, time to completion is
fairly short but readability and maintainability sometimes suffer.

Assembly provides the maximum utilization of system resources and processing
power. When this is a 'drop dead' requirement nothing else will suffice. 
Assembly language provides no support for maintaining module interfaces 
and is often abused (push something on the stack and then execute it is
a common example). This makes it difficult to share work among undisciplined
programmers. Nothing enforces readability and styles vary wildly so this 
can also be a problem when someone 'new' picks up some existing code. 
Assembly usually has the highest delivery and maintenence costs of any 
language except APL.

Modula-2's biggest strengh is it's enforcement of routine interfaces. When
multiple programmers share a task they can design to an interface and know
that when their code links the interface has not changed. It's considered
"wordy" by many programmers and often suffers from "moduleitis" where 
every possible subroutine gets it's own module. Generally, the code does
what the program indicates and it is often the most maintainable code of the
bunch. 

Look at your needs and then pick your language. 

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.