Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!labrea!navajo!billw From: billw@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (William E. Westfield) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Assembly vs HLL debate Message-ID: <1250@navajo.STANFORD.EDU> Date: Tue, 23-Dec-86 16:11:23 EST Article-I.D.: navajo.1250 Posted: Tue Dec 23 16:11:23 1986 Date-Received: Wed, 24-Dec-86 00:14:33 EST Organization: Stanford University Lines: 31 Keywords: Hah! People have repsonded to my message (compilers use expenisve function calls, etc) by saying "gee, use a good compiler, it will code functions inline and optimize calling sequences as well as an assembly programmer". I say Hah! Does anyone know of even one example of such a compiler? In line functions ought to be pretty machine independent, and since one of the claimed virtues of HLLs is transportability, please specify a compiler (or set of compatable compilers) that runs on several different machines, say 8086, 68000, and Vax... (gee, you mean that my wonderful program that runs almost as fast as assembly on my vax runs 10 times slower on your sun? That's too bad - Its not MY fault, wait for a better compiler...) I might just as well say that all programs should be written in structured, transportable assembler, discounting the fact that such a thing doesn't exist. Another response (to my explantion of how a PUSH function written in Pascal might work), was essentially "dont use pascal, use a language where the stack can be directly manipulated by source statements" (I think LisP was suggested). Get serious. This is a HLL vs ASM debate, not a Lisp vs Pascal debate. Very few HLLs allow direct manipulation of the stack. Like it or not, Pascal is a popular HLL that implements all those things that the HLL advocates claim are important (range and type checking, data and program structures, and so on). To throw it out just because PUSH and POP are so inefficient is ridiculous. I was just pointing out this was a common slow-down for HLLs... BillW