Xref: utzoo comp.lang.c++:2156 comp.lang.c:14436 comp.lang.forth:696 comp.lang.fortran:1563 comp.lang.misc:2239 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!onfcanim!dave From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.forth,comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Assembly or .... Message-ID: <16820@onfcanim.UUCP> Date: 1 Dec 88 20:45:49 GMT References: <1388@aucs.UUCP> <729@convex.UUCP> <1961@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <189@ernie.NECAM.COM> Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal Lines: 31 In article <189@ernie.NECAM.COM> koll@ernie.NECAM.COM (Michael Goldman) writes: > >There is also the question of what happens when a new machine (like the >IBM PC or MAC, or whatever) comes out and the C compilers for it are >late or terribly buggy, or soooooooooo slow, and there are few if >any utility packages for it ? > >Only in the academic world can code be written to be 100% machine >independent. The rest of us have to struggle with those little quirks >of the chips. Hmm. Is it only in the academic world that the system (hardware and software) is chosen for its benefit to the programmer or user? I think that most people choose hardware and software for its usefulness to them. If a particular piece of hardware has too many "quirks" to be useful, we don't buy it. So we can write code that is 100% portable (not necessarily the same thing as machine independent) to all of the machines that we consider sufficiently non-brain-damaged to be useful to us. I'll suggest that it's primarily people who write software to sell that have to deal with new hardware that doesn't yet have decent compilers. You aren't buying the hardware to use it, but to write stuff to sell to others who use it, and are thus forced to put up with whatever state it is in. The "software vendor" view of the world is at least as narrow as that of the "academic" view, and certainly not representative of all non-academic users. "The rest of us" are end users, who don't have to touch such hardware if we don't want to.