Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: using (ugh!  yetch!) assembler
Message-ID: <11701@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 2 Aug 88 14:16:21 GMT
References: <6341@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <60859@sun.uucp> <474@m3.mfci.UUCP> <2442@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2959@utastro.UUCP> <6464@aw.sei.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 34


  I think the whole question of HLL vs assembler is moot, since the
economics have changed and it doesn't make sense to use assembler *for
most things* anymore.

  In 1970 a reasonable computer cost around $1.5 million, and a
reasonable programmer with a little experience cost about $8k. Today a
workstation costs $10-20k and a slightly experienced programmer cost
$30-50k (depending on location, etc). This makes programmer time a lot
more expensive in relation to the machine on which the program runs, and
makes productivity more important.

  Another factor is program size. There were no really large programs in
the "old days," because there were no machines which could run them.
Anyone who used to program in 64k (or even 1mb) machines using hundreds
of overlays knows that the largest programs 20 years ago were very small
compared to the programs of today. When you get to millions of lines of
code, you probably couldn't debug a program in assembler before it was
obsolete.

  I realize that there are still special cases, most of which involve
thrying to push some hardware to the absolute limits of its performance,
but in general the cost of large programs is assembler, and the cost of
porting them to a new machine in a few years, makes assembler the last
choice of languages for business, and lack of resources makes it
unattractive for research.

  Before replying please read carefully. I am not claiming that
assembler is completely obsolete, only that it is a poor choice in most
cases, due to time and/or money needed.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me