Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!pyramid!wendyt From: wendyt@pyrps5 (Wendy Thrash) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Things compilers never need ( was Re: Bandwidth and RISC vs. CISC ) Message-ID: <68131@pyramid.pyramid.com> Date: 29 Apr 89 02:26:27 GMT Sender: daemon@pyramid.pyramid.com Reply-To: wendyt@pyrps5.pyramid.com (Wendy Thrash) Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA Lines: 23 In article <650011@hpclscu.HP.COM> shankar@hpclscu.HP.COM (Shankar Unni) writes: I have this theory that people who actually use computers to do useful things can tell language designers, compiler writers, and system architects a great deal about what they actually need. If we listen to them, we may advance the state of the art. Herman has been quite clear in telling us some of what he wants/needs. He has not spared our egos in the process. We may not always agree with what he says, but can we not find inspiration in his ideas? When an intelligent person tells me that HLLs are inadequate for what s/he is trying to do, I suspect that it's time to investigate, not time to flame. Of course, Herman's suggestion that >> the ability to do intelligent coding using the machine capabilities may >> be destroyed by learning such restrictive coding procedures first seems fairly risible, but who knows: I seem to recall a fairly respectable computer scientist* saying something similar about coding in BASIC and its effect on coding in modern HLLs, and compiler writers didn't dump on him. :-) *(This is certainly not meant to imply that Herman is not a respectable computer scientist; skill with statistics, which his net address leads me to ascribe to him, does not preclude knowledge of other disciplines.)