Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Partial application in C Message-ID: <1988Jul8.033348.17432@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References: <3353@cognos.UUCP> <619@goofy.megatest.UUCP>, <429@uwovax.uwo.ca> Date: Fri, 8 Jul 88 03:33:48 GMT > Besides, I thought that self-modifying code was (a) extremely difficult > to write, and (b) considered poor programming practice. Don't think of self-modifying code, which is indeed an abomination. Think of code that generates other code at execution time. For example, the fastest implementations of RasterOp generate custom-built code at run time, and then execute it, when the rasters being manipulated are big. Various incremental compiler/interpreter hybrids are another obvious example -- done well, dynamic code generation can give near-compiler speeds without sacrificing the advantages of an interpreter.