🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <201@pyuxv.UUCP> sr@pyuxv.UUCP (25220-S Radtke) writes:
>
>>	Some years ago when I was learning 6800 assembler (anybody remember
>>D2 kits?) I used to first write everything in C and then hand compile it
 
  As a minor addition to the technique (and to show that you're not
forced to expose yourself to possible chromosome damage by using C)
I wrote the Navy's standard executive for their 16-bit line of computers
(AN/UYK-20, -44, AN/AYK-14) first in Ada (as it existed in 1979).  Of
course, there were no Ada compilers then, so I hand-translated some of
the important algorithms -- task scheduling, memory allocation -- into
Pascal that I could compile and run.  This was used to debug and tune
them for speed.  Finally, I wrote some assembler macros supporting
IF-THEN-ELSE, looping, and subroutine invocation and hand-translated
the Ada/Pascal into assembler/macros.

  The contract was competitive: a team from an unnamed mainframe
manufacturer wrote their own version, but all in assembler.  There
was great emphasis on speed, so they wrote theirs as one giant
assembly program to avoid the overhead of subroutine calls.  Mine
was divided into 60-odd modules.  They spent their time on micro-
optimization of the assembly; I spent mine on the overall design.
Mine was about 10% faster.

   The OS I'm writing now, for the 80386, will be in Ada from start
to finish.  If, when it's up and running, I find that 90% of its
execution time is in 10% of the code (which is likely), I'll look
at that 10% for possible recoding of strategic modules in assembler.
I'll also keep the Ada routines that are replaced, for future
retargetting.
       -- Bob Munck