Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!fenchurch.mit.edu!jbs
From: jbs@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: using (ugh!  yetch!) assembler
Message-ID: <9763@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: 26 Jul 88 16:58:09 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2926@utastro.UUCP> <37014@linus.UUCP>
Sender: uucp@eddie.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jbs@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal)
Organization: MIT EE/CS Computer Facilities, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 22

In article <37014@linus.UUCP> munck@faron.UUCP (Robert Munck) writes:
>[...]assembly language will "fit" only
>the smallest, most toy-like, never-to-be-used-for-real prototypes.
>If I've got two years and five people to write a system that takes
>100,000 lines of Ada or 500,000 lines of assembly code to express (an
>extremely conservative expansion factor), I have to write it in Ada;
>the assembly version would never be finished.

This just isn't true.  There are an aweful lot of real live products,
and BIG ones, that have been built in assembly language.  Have you
read _The_Mythical_Man-Month_?  5000 man-years it did take, but OS/360
was a whole bunch of assembly code (millions of lines, minimum) that
has probably made IBM billions.

I write a 25000 line assembly program (for a class) about 4 years ago
that was well organized, documented, etc.  I have no doubt that it
could be modified and maintained today (or 10 years from now).

All this isn't to say that I think assembly should be used for large
programs (I don't).  Only that it is possible.

Jeff Siegal