From VMS to UNIX

mat at hou5d.UUCP mat at hou5d.UUCP
Wed Oct 26 14:04:23 AEST 1983


Well, I will allow myself ONE public reply in this arena ... and anything
further that I have to say will go to net.flame.

THE PROBLEM WITH ANY LANGUAGE THAT TRIES TO BE VERY GOOD ON * O N E *
MACHINE IS THAT IT WILL INEVITABLY BE WORSE (OR UNUSABLE) ON OTHERS.

C just barely avoided that trap.

I believe that Bliss qualifies ... although it is nowhere as bad as some
``systems programming languages'' that I have seen.  Most of THOSE were
written by Hardware Jocks.  What is a hardware jock?

Manager:	H J has just pointed out that if we replace the model
		xxxyyy processor made by Mungotronics with the bbmm
		that Standard Semi makes, we can knock 5% off the cost of
		That Board.

	(``That Board'' represents 1/12 of the cost of the product.  The
	Standard Semi processor uses a 9 register general purpose
	architecture for which approximately 40,000 lines of code have been
	written and debugged and documented.  The Mungotronics machine is
	a stack machine with one index register that must be loaded a byte
	at a time, and no multiply or divide instructions.  It is also
	35% slower than the Standard Semi chip and one of That Board's
	functions is communications.)

Programmer:	We can't do that!  The processors are totally incompatible!

Hardware Jock:	What do you mean, incompatible!  They're both NMOS!?


Hardware Jocks write a lot of ``systems programming languages''.  They
often call them ``Systems Programming Language'' or some such drivel.

Real Hardware Men ask BEFORE they build.  Brassboards mean never having
to say you're sorry!

						Mark Terribile
						DOdN



More information about the Comp.unix.wizards mailing list