Portability and the Ivory Tower (was Re: Book on Microsoft C)

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <4255794d.b11a at falcon.engin.umich.edu> ejd at caen.engin.umich.edu (Edward J Driscoll) writes:

>I certainly don't claim that people should program like
>hackers.  I do claim that even a disciplined programmer
>can be justified in using machine-specific code -- potentially
>even large bodies of it, such as the entire user-interface
>mechanism -- and therefore has every right to know about
>the specific capabilities of his machine.

Are you prepared to either abandon these applications when the machine
becomes obsolete or be forced to purchase something that offers
backwards compatibility?  If you can afford to abandon it, then the
application (and whatever advantage it gains from machine-specific
code) must not be very important.  I recently read that computers
have an average life of about 5 years but the same applications
are maintained for 10-15 years.  

Les Mikesell