Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c++:2165 comp.lang.c:14455 comp.lang.forth:704 comp.lang.fortran:1572 comp.lang.misc:2248 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!gatech!uflorida!haven!purdue!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!orr From: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.forth,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Assembly or .... Message-ID: <2006@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 30 Nov 88 14:10:53 GMT References: <1388@aucs.UUCP> <729@convex.UUCP> <1961@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <6529@june.cs.washington.edu> <1988@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <1434@zen.UUCP> Reply-To: orr@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Fraser Orr) Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Lines: 25 In article <1434@zen.UUCP> frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) writes: [My comments on the relative merits of optimisers and hand crafting] >Which means that, if you always want good work done, you'd better use >people for some of it. [Sound of foot being shot in background.] Ouch (sound of me being shot in the foot:^) No that is not what I'm getting at at all Frank. What I'm saying is tha programmers are good at some things (like local, domain specific optimisations) whereas programs are good at others (such as optimal register usage, common expression elimination etc). Unfortunately the two are not compatible, that is, when the optimiser has munged your code, it is pretty hard for the programmer to further optimise becase it is so seriously ununlike the original. What I was trying to say is that on balance they are about equal (he says with no evidence whatsoever to support him), and I'd prefer to get the compiler to do the dirty work. My time costs money y'know. >Frank Wales, Software Consultant, [frank@zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank] ==Fraser Orr ( Dept C.S., Univ. Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK) UseNet: {uk}!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!orr JANET: orr@uk.ac.glasgow.cs ARPANet(preferred xAtlantic): orr%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk