21 Oct
2006
21 Oct
'06
9:29 p.m.
On 21 Oct 2006 at 23:08, Jim Leonard wrote:
A compiler is supposed to generate assembler-level
(machine-level)
constructs for what the high-level language is asking for. Nothing is
more efficient than that. If the compiler produced code that was so
incredibly obtuse and broken that it took longer to execute an operation
than an interpreter, the compiler was a piece of crap.
I'm not sure if you include P-code as "interpreted", but yes, some
compilers were indeed inefficient pieces of crap. Even more run-time
libraries were pure unadulterated garbage.
The thing that will slow down any BASIC, compiled or interpreted, is
the floating point package. It used to be that many BASICs did not
have integer datatypes, so a slow mathpack can do great harm.
Cheers,
Chuck