Re: [OT] Gibson's vision of computer languajes

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

Dave Poirier wrote:

> Jano wrote:
>> I'm pretty sure many of us know Steven Gibson. Today I've tested a 
>> freeware from him. In the instructions page he made these statements:
>>
>> "All of my programs are so small and so fast because I write only in 
>> the one, true, computer language: Assembly Language. All other 
>> languages reduce to assembly language, but they lose a lot in the 
>> translation. (Judge for yourself.)"
>>
>> "People who can't program in assembly language (just about everyone) 
>> get really annoyed with me when I talk about how much better it is 
>> than their pet language. But it's not my fault if they just say they 
>> care about quality."
>>
>> My blood is boiling. I want only to share to cool me a little down.
> 
> Well, I'm an assembly freak, and I must say that I pretty much agree 
> with him <g>.  While assembly does create software that are small and 
> fast, and can be made as reliable as any other programming language 
> (using proper development techniques), portability can be applied at 
> best by rewriting the entire thing using a generic algorithm.
...
> EKS - Dave Poirier

There is nothing wrong with "liking assembler", but you're foolish to
believe that assembler programs "can be made as reliable as any other
programming language".  Having used operating systems written in
assembly language (anyone remember Honeywell's GCOS8/DPS8?), you
would not want to go back there!  Using those systems I learned very
quickly to save my edit session every few minutes (if not seconds),
because it was not unusual for the system to crash between 1-5 times
a day. There were always new oodles of assembler patches being issued
to correct prior patches and on and on it went. MULTICS and UNIX were
a big advance in reliability because they went AWAY from assembly
language. Now it is a good time to move away from C to Ada for
operating systems (note that BSD and Linux are still written in
C, not C++).

The argument you make is the exact same argument that C/C++ programmers
make WRT Ada. They always state "using proper development techniques",
but the underlying problem is that this is subject to human error and
is not reliably done. It kinda reminds one of the
saying "the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions".

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg