🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1281@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
me>In article <2249@pembina.UUCP>, cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (Chris Shaw) writes:
HR>>In article <1277@l.cc.purdue.edu> cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes
HR>>>And what if your users find that the language is inadequate? I know of
HR>>>no adequate one. Do not cripple the programmer.

me>> <Silly automotive analogy. Don't cripple the driver, etc.>

HR>This is the wrong analogy. I do not ask for technological impossi-
HR>bilities, or things requiring great cost.

On the contrary, special cases that HR desires DO come at great cost. Read on.

HR>The car has a steering wheel. I do not wish to put it under your control.

Granted. Of course, cars aren't computers, so chasing this analogy is a waste of
time. Explaining an analogy is worse than explaining a joke.

me>>The point I'm illustrating is that if you want to do something that 99% of 
me>>the rest of the world is unwilling to pay for....

HR>What I am asking for is cheap. I am asking that you unchain the steering 
HR>wheel....Also, one person cannot produce a language....

I dispute this. Many one-person languages exist and are in use today. A one 
person language has the advantage of conceptual wholeness. Now I admit, it won't
be easy to create SL all by yourself, but if it was easy, your solution would
be for sale on PC's for $75. Or you could hack it in an afternoon.

HR>I am not in a CS department. Funding for people in mathematics and statis-
HR>tics to hire programmers is difficult and niggardly, even to hire students.

I suppose the real thrust of my argument is that you can do anything you like,
but if nobody else is interested, expect to do it yourself! HR states that
he has no money for programmers, and I infer from this that he has either no
time or no ability to do this himself. Perhaps he has neither, I don't know.
But the latter statement from HR about needing $$ to implement his plan 
contradicts his earlier statement that he's not looking for something at 
great cost. In a nutshell: HR wants a niche product, and tacitly admits that
substantial design and development time are required to produce the desired
product. It's going to be expensive, because you can't amortize the development
cost over a lot of customers.

HR>I have made one concrete suggestion for something which is not a language,but
HR>which would make for versatile relatively easy programming. It is a versatile
HR>macro processor; maybe one should call it a user-controlled semi-compiler. 
HR>...an example for the use of a single machine instruction on the CYBER 205...

I think that HR's goals conflict. He wants something portable but at the same
time able to maximize machine performance. In other words, you need an 
expression syntax that is able to encompass all available modifications of
a particular 205 instruction, plus all mods for Cray, plus SX-1, etc.
But at the same time, portability is desired. What if 205 option A is not
available on Cray? What do you do? Cut the expression into inefficient little 
bits? How is this different from normal C code?

I guess my point is that if you only want nifty expressions for the 205, you're
simply asking for a spoonful of syntactic sugar, assuming that the #asm
thing allows proper data structure access. If the compiler-asm link is
inadequate, then this is probably a straightforward system fix. I'd wager that
the grail -- portable and maximally efficient -- is impossible.

HR>I am asking for a means whereby a programmer can use a reasonable notation to
HR>tell the modified assembler what instructions to use. 

Machine specific, unportable, and therefore window dressing, unless you are
content with giving hints only. But this means you have to say the same thing
twice. A hard problem.

HR>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
--
Chris (not a guru) Shaw    cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (or via watmath or ubc-vision)
University of Alberta
CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !
-- 
Chris Shaw    cdshaw@alberta.UUCP (or via watmath or ubc-vision)
University of Alberta
CatchPhrase: Bogus as HELL !