Re: Warning: Flame Bait

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <E1o04r.D0F@world.std.com>, bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff) writes:

> We'll see what happens.  Java may well be the final nail in the coffin
> for weird machines.  Hmm.
> 
> Anyway, it's hard to reason about portability "in practice".  Think
> about all the C programmers who write code assuming sizeof(int) =
> sizeof(char*), and write code that is quite portable -- in practice.

Assumptions of correspondence between "int" and pointer sizes
are scheduled to be discovered as manufacturers start actually
using the the 64-bit addressing capabilities of the machines
they have already sold people.

Those who program for DEC Unix, and then VMS, and in the future
Windows NT are able to gradually discover through program execution
all such (or is it really _all_, is there someplace we have not tested?)
bon mots.  So unlike the Java case, the hardware does not have to be
"weird", it just has to be "different".  I believe IBM, HP and Sun
all have hardware with 64-bit addressing now, so all those C programmers
out there may be kept quite busy, with half of them engaged in eliminating
this error and the other half engaged in making that same old assumption
in new code.

Larry Kilgallen