Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site harvard.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!teddy!panda!talcott!harvard!sasaki From: sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) Newsgroups: net.lang.pascal,net.lang.c Subject: Re: optimizing compilers vs. optimizing programmers Message-ID: <297@harvard.ARPA> Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 17:32:26 EST Article-I.D.: harvard.297 Posted: Wed Jan 16 17:32:26 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jan-85 14:04:05 EST References: <285@harvard.ARPA> <4922@utzoo.UUCP> Organization: Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard Lines: 21 Xref: watmath net.lang.pascal:198 net.lang.c:3909 > In the end, VMS got written mostly in assembler anyway (unless they have > gone and re-coded later version, which I doubt, but stranger things > have happened). I have it from several sources that the reason this > happened was because a certain prominent DEC individual decided that > no compiler could write code as good as his assembler (ie it wouldn't > be fast enough). So much for consistency... > > Laura Creighton > utzoo!laura VMS version 1 was written mostly in assembler. Parts of version 2 got rewritten in Bliss. The most notable of the rewrites was the file system ACP (the thing that converts file names into physical disk block numbers). Andy Goldstein rewrote it in Bliss and carefully wrote some of the routines in assembler to compare against the Bliss. The Bliss generated code was smaller. -- Marty Sasaki Havard University Science Center sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp} 617-495-1270