#Opening Screens Quietly
2 messages in this thread
Agreed that is an important proviso. I suppose the appropriate comparison is
any person who knows assembly, wants to write the most compact program
available (and fast), and whether the compiler can beat them. For a novice, "C"
would be better, perhaps. For an expert programmer, and I consider myself an
expert 68000 programmer, I have yet to see any C compiler beat my coding. The
best compiler I've seen to date is the Microsoft version 4.0 C compiler for the
IBM PC. Even there, I can still beat it over extended code sequences. The
output from Amiga Lattice C is nowhere near optimum. I don't have Aztec so I
can't judge its efficiency.
One could make the analogy of a chess program's ability. It might be able to
beat 90% of all chess players; but if you want a grandmaster performance,
there's still no such program…
John,
I do like your analogy to a ches program. Since a compiler must accept your
code without any way of knowing what you intend with your instructions, it
must, out of necessity, generate more generalized output than what a good
assembly programmer would write.
Aztec does an awful lot of pushing and popping with parameters, a good thing
in some ways, keeping routines from clobbering registers, etc., but it sure
does take space and reduce speed.
Regards, Larry.