Xref: utzoo comp.os.vms:8874 comp.unix.wizards:11304 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!ece-csc!ncsuvx!gatech!rutgers!rochester!ritcv!cci632!ccicpg!arnold!dave From: dave@arnold.UUCP (Dave Arnold) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: VMS vs. UNIX file system Message-ID: <185@arnold.UUCP> Date: 22 Sep 88 08:36:05 GMT References: <411@marob.masa.com> <178@arnold.uucp> <3442@crash.cts.com>Organization: Home, Mission Viejo, Ca Lines: 39 eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > In article <13608@mimsy.uucp>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: > > (Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer rewrote the B news software and got > > a similar order of magnitude performance increase, without changing > > the file formats at all.) > > [...] > > The principle exemplified here bears repeating yet again: > > A CLEAN DESIGN IS THE ROYAL ROAD TO SPEEDY CODE > I couldn't agree any more. People I work with seem to get bogged down in the "How big of a QIO can I do" syndrome during early early program design and development. I really protest this (especially when they encourage me to do the same). One of the reasons why I am a *GREAT* :-) programmer...is...because...: I much prefer to view things in the most simple way. I actually go to great effort rewriting things (with my bosses glare $$$) just to acheive a simpler program design. Sometimes the rewrite achieves better performance (not intentionally). And if not, facilitates easier performance enhancements---But I save those for last. This is the thing that I love about UNIX so much that I wish VMS shared: SIMPLICITY. Everything is so damn simple, it goes right over some people's head. Now if UNIX only had AST's, timer queues, exception handling, and a better "SHELL"---I would be in heaven. Remember the days when we would bring monolithic straight-line code to bed with us, and make marks on the listing? I even remember back in the late 1970's my boss teaching me the cons of structured programming by explaining to me that a function call just turns into a JMP instruction :-) This is the 80's!!! Soon to be 90's!! Let's not get stuck in the dark ages! -- Dave Arnold dave@arnold.UUCP {cci632|uunet}!ccicpg!arnold!dave