Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!zodiac!joyce!sri-unix!garth!smryan
From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: using assembler
Summary: The job not done till the paperwork's done.
Message-ID: <1086@garth.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jul 88 02:25:24 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2926@utastro.UUCP> <37014@linus.UUCP>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 32

>Given real world system sizes, budgets, deadlines, and MAINTENANCE
>constraints as your "requirements,"  assembly language will "fit" only
>the smallest, most toy-like, never-to-be-used-for-real prototypes.

Leaping into the fray, I will place a vote for assembly. In a previous
incarnation, I worked on a Fortran compiler written in a macro assembler.
Today I'm working on a compiler written in Pascal. The assembly-written
compiler was easier to maintain for two reasons:

(1)  using macros, the assembler was more extensible than pascal.

(2)  your manager won't let you write an assembly program without block
     comments, interface description, and comments on nearly ever line.

In the case of assembly, nobody pretends the code is self documenting
and so everybody is required to maintain the appropriate documentation.

The pascal code is presumed self documenting which is load of cow doo-doo.
Added to that, old code is commented out rather than deleted. [SCCS? We
don't need no steenking SCCS.]

As a newcomer to Unix, I'm disgusted by the lack of documentation, both
embedded in the code and in the user manuals/interface description.
[Interfaces? We don't need no steenking interfaces.] And I thought CDC was
bad. I still don't know what all the VI/EX commands are--none the ATT manuals
I have describe it fully. I can't use EMACS because nobody has botherred
defining it or make the documentation available.

Assembly is so difficult that nobody deludes himself about the difficulty.

Unix won't go belly up because of ATT's pigging--it'll die when Kernighan,
Ritchie, Thompson, et al retire and the next generation is completely
unable to decipher the supposedly simple and easy operating system.