CompuServe Messages

>>I suppose it is the same trade off between low level efficiency and fast >>development that has been going on since programming began. > >Agreed. This is certainly not wholeheartedly the issue. >Not programming in assembler has cost me a few years of my life in >solving compiler bugs. I've never heard this before. You must have has some serious extenuating circumstances that you are not going into. Don't get me wrong: I've had a plethora of doozies happen to me over the years with compilers, but I'd hardly call it man-years of punishment or work to reconcile. Heck, I'm a compiler writer, and even bugs in my own compilers have not cost man years to reconcile. >This is why I returned to it. I assure you: it was a >REAL pain in the ass being used to the comfort of high languages BUT I have >fewer bugs now AND they are much much easier to find. I can understand if you're writing something highly specific to some CPU, or it is imperitive to be handled in .Xseconds, etc, but I'd hardly feel encouraged to write a multi-million line app in assembler (I'm not even encouraged to write it in a HLL). But let's branch out of the personal preferences zone for a minute or two. What were the HLL features that turned you off? (BTW, my goal is not to turn this into a language war or anything similar and hope all participants agree). >There is one, extremely important advantage to programming in assembler >instead of other languages: all the bugs are YOURS! I don't understand. That simply does not follow. For instance, you really have not found a bug in any assembler (really, another flavor of compiler, which you seem to hate so much!) ever? There are pros and cons and compromises to everything. Surely, you have run into them while doing your various assembler apps over the years, yes? Assembler is definitely not the silver bullet you continue to imply within this context for anybody who has experience using it and it does not mean all the bugs are yours. BTW, and I'm not trying to be a wise guy, but as an attempt to perhaps stroke at the heart of the matter: how come you do not program directly in binary? >>But I would expect OO to make programs less buggy.<< > >In principle, I won't disagree with this. BUT! Isn't it LOGICAL to speak the >language of the computer instead of learning another language that is >ultimately translated to machine language anyway? Ah! Like I've just said then: why don't you program and write your code in binary? No, IMO, it's not logical or common sense to do so. What it logical is to approach something aware of the goals and costs and compromises.