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From: peter@athena.mit.edu (Peter J Desnoyers)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch
Subject: Re: Self-modifying code
Message-ID: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 21 Jul 88 15:02:00 GMT
References: <5262@june.cs.washington.edu> <260@thor.wright.EDU> <759@cernvax.UUCP> <472@m3.mfci.UUCP> <60782@sun.uucp>
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Reply-To: peter@athena.mit.edu (Peter J Desnoyers)
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In article <60782@sun.uucp> guy@gorodish.Sun.COM (Guy Harris) writes:
>
>A naive (and not rhetorical) question: what evidence is there to indicate the
>degree to which "narrowing the semantic gap" with capability machines and the
>like would improve the productivity of programmers or the reliability of
>programs, and to which other techniques [fast machines, good software]
>achieve the same goal?

Some protection and tracing features are MUCH slower in software.
These features are also useful in writing wonderful debuggers. You
need a bus snooper or ICE with an 8088 to achieve debugger features
that can be done in software on the 68020 or 80386. And per-task
memory protection is a big win in any environment, but impossible in
software. 

				Peter Desnoyers
				peter@athena.mit.edu