Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers

lenngray@netcom.com (Lenny Gray)
Sun, 7 Nov 1993 19:57:18 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[25 earlier articles]
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers drraymon@watdragon.uwaterloo.ca (1993-11-01)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers dmr@alice.att.com (1993-11-02)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers steven.parker@acadiau.ca (1993-11-02)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers pardo@cs.washington.edu (1993-11-03)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers kanze@us-es.sel.de (James Kanze) (1993-11-03)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers vthrc@mailbox.uq.oz.au (Danny Thomas) (1993-11-05)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers lenngray@netcom.com (1993-11-07)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers rfg@netcom.com (1993-11-13)
Re: Folk Theorem: Assemblers are superior to Compilers synaptx!thymus!daveg@uunet.UU.NET (Dave Gillespie) (1993-11-15)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: lenngray@netcom.com (Lenny Gray)
Keywords: assembler, performance
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
References: 93-10-152
Date: Sun, 7 Nov 1993 19:57:18 GMT

Ralph Johnson (johnson@cs.uiuc.edu) wrote:
: Some people (I don't know if it was the same people or CMU grad students)
: wrote the same programs in Bliss given the same amount of time. There was
                                                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: some variance, of course, but by and large the Bliss programs were smaller.


This is part of the problem. Nobody says that the compiler isn't faster
for a given amount of development. The question implied that there was
interest in comparing whether or not an assembler was useful _at_all_, and
for sure it is. When an assembler programmer spends an extra _100_ hours
optimizing for the purpose of saving 10,000 users 10% of their run-time of
a program that is run 1 hour a day, his investment is paid back in time-
value to the community 1000% for _every_day_that_program_is_used_.
--


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