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

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Well, I can't hardly argue with that. :-) Seeing the challenge as creating
an artistic thing of beauty negates any of the engineering arguments against
that technique. I used to know an artist back in college who did these very
large paintings that usually consisted of a monochrome background with some
squiggly lines on them of a different color. He'd labor for days/weeks with
oil paint, carefully getting the monochrome background absolutely smooth and
consistent in color & texture. It was really impressive that he could get it
to look just like the shiny paint job on a new car - all by hand & with
relatively primitive equipment.

But Detroit was getting the same appearance (or better) in a fraction of the
time and cost. Would you buy the car that was painted by the artist rather
than the computer-controlled spraying equipment? You might if money was no
object. It might amuse you that you got the same paint job as a Ford
Escort - but all laboriusly done by hand. But that would mean that only a
very small number of people with lots of money could have cars like that.

I won't say it has no value to do software entirely in assembler -
especially if viewed as an artistic endeavor. Its just that people don't buy
software to marvel at how perfectly it squeezes out every last nanosecond of
execution time or every last byte of memory. They buy it to get a job done.
Hence they want a reliable, affordable solution to their problems - not a
work of art.

Code bloat, OTOH, is a different issue. I'll agree that lots of software is
designed inefficiently and includes thousands of features that are
interesting from a marketing perspective, but don't really move the mission
forward. Sometimes I just want to type up some text and a command line
interface & glass-teletype would do the job just as well as a really spiffy
GUI based program that consumed megabytes of my disk drive. But I don't see
that as an Assembler versus HLL issue.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Dave Poirier" <instinc@users.sf.net> wrote in message
news:3C85AA9A.7050201@users.sf.net...
>
> I think there is really only one thing that could explain why I value
> more assembler than other languages, it's that I probably value more the
>   time the machine spend executing the code than the time the human
> spend writing the code.
>
> Lately I started considering myself more of an artist than a programmer,
> which is probably why I see the beauty in pure binary and take pleasure
> in counting cpu cycles and bytes of memory used.  For me, a program is
> "good" if it does the job without failing, a program is "nice" if it
> does the job fast and still does it "good", and a program is "awesome"
> if it's using one of the best sequence of instructions possible and fits
> in tight places while achieving the set goal.
>
> I'm happy when I get a program done in HLL, but I'm not satisfied.  I'm
> happy and satisfied if I get a program done in assembly and I know it's
> the smallest/fastest thing I could create.
>
> I just keep seeing all we could do with those computers we had in the
> '80s and read about what was done in the '60s and '70s (I wasn't there
> back then), and I find it amazing at the amount of work that could be
> done on those slow beasts.  Now we seem to have each a supercomputer
> sitting on our desk and we seem to be barely able to edit a text document.
>
> Sure, the document is now fitting in a page, that we actually "see" as
> it will be printed, and some other stuff, but when I come to think about
> what the cpu actually execute, I just see billion of wasted cycles.
> Instead of improving programs, ppl buy bigger computers.
>
> sorry for rambling on, hope I didn't confuse anybody (sorry for my
> english also).
>
> EKS - Dave Poirier
>