CompuServe Messages

Ben, there have been programs that I've seen that had two choices: either write the whole routine in assembly, or have 2-lines of ILAC. In those routines, I think the programmers made the right choice in using ILAC, as it got the job done in the best way possible. Of course any time you use ILAC you're creating machine dependent code, but ILAC has in the past been a viable alternative to creating a whole function in asm for all of two lines of asm code. This all reminds me of the arguments w/ gotos that come up every once in awhile. Both ILAC and goto's aren't evil forces created by Satan to tempt programmers into sin – they're just language features that have been used in both positive and negative ways. I myself have never had to code ILAC, but I know people who had, and their products were better because of it – both from a readability and a performance standpoint. I suspect that you may have been exposed to some really horrendous ILAC early-on, and you assume all ILAC has to be that way. Well, it doesn't, and it can be even elegant in certain limited applications. Finally, ILAC _is_ going the way of the dinosaur, as most of things it was good for are being implimented directly into compilers (eg. interrupt function in C). But please don't tell me that our compiler is junk just because of the inclusion of an optional feature (optional=you don't have to use it).