Re: Bit manipulation

["Marc A. Criley" <mcquad@earthlink.net>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> In article <rwDP5.415395$i5.7092109@news1.frmt1.sfba.home.com>,
>   tmoran@acm.org wrote:
> > >You just HAVE to be sensitive to cache and TLB-miss issues
> > >in modern programming if performance is an issue. Far too
> > At what point in a programmer's education is this taught
> > these days?
> 
> Hard to say, since things are very variable. All too often
> the answer is not at all. At NYU, we used to have the whole
> second year be assembly language programming and machine
> and system architecture. But the faculty found that too
> much, and it was cut to one semester. Quite a few folks
> on the NYU faculty would like to cut out that remaining
> semester as a required course, and make it an elective on
> the grounds that most people don't need to know low level
> stuff, and I am afraid that viewpoint (which I strongly
> object to) has already found favor at many major universities,
> and people can get an undergraduate degree without this
> material ever being taught.
> 

I certainly must concur with the opposition to that viewpoint.

On many occasions over the course of my career I've had the
debugger display raw memory, registers, and assembly
language to assist the uncovering of bugs.  And all too
frequently when working with someone else, I find that pulling
up these displays to look at low-level information leaves them
glassy eyed and bewildered.  They have little cognizance of
what's going on beneath the surface of the software, be it C,
C++, or Ada.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation