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From: mdw@excessus.demon.co.uk (Mark Wooding)
Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or
 Pascal?]
Date: 1996/08/18
Message-ID: <slrn51ekt2.5rj.mdw@excessus.demon.co.uk>#1/1
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organization: Straylight Development Lab
reply-to: mdw@excessus.demon.co.uk
newsgroups: 
 comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer
Date: 1996-08-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Dan Pop <Dan.Pop@cern.ch> wrote:
> Ine <01bb8c6d$c62d44c0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com> writes:
>
> > ... to imagine that on the average they beat even the average human
> > assembly programmer is just nonsense.
> 
> Try to test your assertions with a nontrivial piece of code on a P6
> or any modern RISC processor.

Can I play?  Or don't you consider ARMs to be `modern' (or RISC) enough?
Or maybe I'm just above average ;-).

Oh, back to the point (or what passes for a point) of this thread.  A
while ago, while traipsing merrily through a disassembly, I discovered
an atrocity, which could only have been generated from something very
similar to the following C code:

	char buf[...];
	char *p;

	...

	while (buf[0]==' ')
	{
	  for (p=buf;p[0]=p[1];p++)
	    ;
	}

	while (buf[strlen(buf)-1]==' ')
	  buf[strlen(buf)-1]=0

I can't believe that anyone with an understanding of what goes on `under
the covers' would possibly write anything like this without feeling ill.
An inkling of what this would be translated into by any implementation
would surely avoid horrors like this.

Anyone who asks `what's wrong with that' will be shot.
-- 
[mdw]

`When our backs are against the wall, we shall turn and fight.'
		-- John Major