🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3111@cirrusl.UUCP>, dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> In <8283@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes:
> >RISC is 2 years ahead in hardware speed, but
> >it is AT LEAST 2 years behind in applications base...

> Are vendors still writing software targeted to specific CPUs?  Why?

Can't teach an old dog new tricks. Check out some of the PC groups... even
when you have a 68030 and 2 MB RAM minimum to play with, there are people
claiming that they need to use 68030-specific assembly for things like
text editors! Yes, I mean version-specific assembly. Now maybe for the inner
loop of a ray tracer I could see it, but a text editor?

But, yes, even when the O/S is good enough and the chips fast enough you
don't ever have to write assembly code, they keep doing it.

And applications programmers are bad enough... you should see some of the
things game programmers do. Blow away the O/S and make direct calls to known
locations in ROM (jump tables are too slow). Then they wonder why their
programs die with new releases of the software.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter@ferranti.com
+1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"