Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!nucsrl!accuvax.nwu.edu!bob
From: bob@accuvax.nwu.edu (Bob Hablutzel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: The Mythical Man Month
Message-ID: <10330092@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 5 Dec 88 15:03:37 GMT
References: <6176@fluke.COM>
Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA
Lines: 32

I never said that assembler is the language of the future (at least, I don't
think I did...) I think you and I agree, but have different slants on the
question. I work in assembler because I want to, because I am most productive
in it, and I wanted to defend a much maligned language. However, there are
some points in your note I have to comment on. 

Note - my positions, which follow, are _Bizarre_ according to modern computer
science. Students - don't do this at home!

1) Assembler is not portable. Fine. Who cares? No seriously, think about this:
when you start to worry about portability, you start shooting for the lowest
common denominator. Programs should _not_ be portable for machines like the
Macintosh - you will be putting blinders on yourself, and forcing yourself
to ignore features of the machine. (Data files, on the other hand, do not
depend on the machine as heavily, and should be portable).

2) Assembler does not immediately lead to the dreaded spaghetti code.
Assembler can be (almost) as structured as Pascal, but doesn't get in your
way when structured programming is a pain.

3) I also disagree that assembler is inappropriate for large projects, but 
I've had enough flaming for today.

Look - enough. 99.9% of the world doesn't like assembler, finds it about kin
to toggling in programs by hand. My GOD! Assembler! That's older than Fortran,
even, and must be worse. I just don't find this to be the case.

I don't think assembler is for everyone. Frankly, a language is just a tool,
and whatever tool you want to use is fine. 

Bob Hablutzel	BOB@NUACC.ACNS.NWU.EDU
Disclaimer:	If this keeps up, I'm switching to BASIC :-)