🚀 go-pugleaf

[deleted fine, clear comments about the importance of type checking]

> Decent high-level languages ...
> ... can also optimize the code better -- most hand-written
> assembler is not highly optimized, because it's too much work for a human.

Most UNIX system hand-written assembly language is suboptimal because
the programmers haven't learned the coding idioms and/or don't give a
damn.  Humans can do a fine job of optimizing assembly language; they
are much better at recognizing special case optimizations that are too
expensive/unlikely to put in an optimizer.  My code, when it worked,
was tight and more optimized than I have seen in most compilers.  What
usually made my assembly code sub-optimal was the need for
parameterization: I had to MOV a parameterized zero into a register
instead of CLRing it, etc.

I will completely support a paraphrase of Henry's quote: most hand-written
assembler code is incorrect; finding all the inconsistencies is too much
work for a human.  I once spent three days finding a "character with a 3
in it" when I intended to declare an "array of 3 characters".  Lint would
have found it in 30 seconds.

> -- 
> Usenet(n): AT&T scheme to earn
> revenue from otherwise-unused	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> late-night phone capacity.	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry

Keep that revenue coming, folks.  Thank you for using AT&T.

-- 

Griff Smith	AT&T (Bell Laboratories), Murray Hill
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