🚀 go-pugleaf

On 5 Aug 1997 15:23:45 GMT, Ben Neil Gerdemann <gerdemb@rice.edu> wrote:
>I think the problem this software developers are constantly under pressure
>to get their software out as fast as possible. Writing tight small code is
>not a priority, and until hardware speeds stop increasing so fast it won't
>be. Sigh. 

I don't think that's the full story.

Code on things like C64s, PDPs etc was mostly assembler.  Hard to write,
but very fast.

These days it's all written in C, easier to write, portable, but
slow.

C programmers are easier to find and cheaper than assembler programmers.

Ccode is portable, assembler isn't - so while assembler was fine if
you have oe OS and one chip to code for, these days, use
C.

Way back when, I knew a guy who wrote a radar training simulator
for the RAAF. It ran in 640K on a TI PC clone (cos at that stage
the TI box had the best graphics). It was in assembler and
performed as well as the huge thing they'd been using that
took a room and 5 men.

It was retired a few years ago for something swisher, on an SGI
I believe.  Needs a fast CPU, and scads of RAM, but it didn't need
a hotshot assembler man.

Zebee