🚀 go-pugleaf

: From: hrubin@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
: Message-ID: <BxpnrA.Eqp@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
: This is already clumsy, and difficult for a mathematician to read.  And it
: fails to use mathematical syntax; in use, simple syntax is more important
: than obscure semantics.  We prefer to write
:       x = y - z       rather than       sub3(x, y, z)

That's all very well, but when you start to want to say

              h = (o^2 + a^2)^.5

or even just

              x = y - c*z

then issues arise of register allocation, instruction scheduling, type
compabibility and/or conversions, peephole optimizations like
substituting a square root routine for the ^.5 operation, 
and so on and on.

NOW tell me... is "simple syntax" or "obscure semantics" more important
to  you?  The two are simply not compatible.  Ultimately, you MUST tell
the computer exactly what instructions to generate if you want to
squeeze the last gasp of performance.  And you simply *can't* hide
behind any simple notation when you do it, because that notation
*doesn't* *contain* *enough* *information* about what machine
operations you wish to generate.

On the other hand, I've seen assemblers that do use

              x = y - z

instead of

              sub3 x y z

And sure enough allowing infix operators and symbolic descriptions
of what each instruction does is a trivial thing to provide if you
want it.  But there's no escaping spelling out each instruction,
each register use, each "committed slot" allocation *by hand* if
you really want to squeeze the last drop of performance.

Herman's mixing of the goals of istream control and abstract notational
convenience means that he can never be satisfied with *any* solution to
his problem, because the problem has self-contradictory goals.
--
Wayne Throop  ...!mcnc!dg-rtp!sheol!throopw