Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!ken
From: ken@gatech.edu (Ken Seefried iii)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: using assembler
Message-ID: <17326@gatech.edu>
Date: 27 Jul 88 10:55:40 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2926@utastro.UUCP> <37014@linus.UUCP> <1086@garth.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@gatech.UUCP (Ken Seefried iii)
Organization: School of Information and Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
Lines: 61

In article <1086@garth.UUCP> smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) writes:
>>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.

Hard to believe, but i will conceded that it is possible.

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

Funny, both my professors and employers don't let me write C or Modula-2
without them either.  I dont see this being endemic to assembler.

>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.]

Sounds like a lack of programmer discapline to me.  I have no illusions  about
the self documenting aspects of pascal; you're right, they don't exist.
C is much worse.   But it is the programmers fault any programme is not
thouroghly documented, almost line by line.

Also, any team that is working on a large software project and not using
SCCS (or better, RCS), deserves the disaster that results.

>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.

Join the club...;'}

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

And C is a cakewalk?  Fine, Ill tell you what...lets get together some
time and program, say, a MIPS machine, you in asm, and me in  C.
I'll even tie one hand behind my backand program in FORTRAN.  And 
we'll see how far each gets (the MIPS is a RISC machine.  Even trivial
operations require non-trivialamounts of asm code).

Thats the problem with assembly in my perception.  It makes EVERYTHING
difficult, especially on some of the new architectures. At least with
C or Pascal,some things are easy.

>... [about unix] ...the supposedly simple and easy operating system.

I've never heard this from anyone but marketing types...


	ken seefried iii	...!{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs, 
	ken@gatech.edu		inhp4, masscomp, rlgvax, sb1, uf-cgrl, 
	ccastks@gitvm1.bitnet	unmvax, ut-ngp, ut-sally}!gatech!ken

	soon to be open: ...!gatech!spooge!ken (finally ;'})