Programmer's conundrums

William Donzelli wrote: I think you'd be amazed at how prevalent it still is! It depends on the market you are in. For example, do you think the microcontroller in your mouse was coded in anything OTHER than assembler? Or, the microcontrollers in your CD-ROM drive? That's already twice as many processors as there are "computers". Now, look at the thermostat on the wall in your living room. And the microcontroller *inside* your furnace (assuming you have a newer model furnace). My VCR has three microcontrollers in it. I have no idea how many are in my stereo components, television, etc. The code in the gasoline pump up the corner was written in assembly language (unfortunately... it was the perfect application to move to a HLL but... :< ). I know of cameras written in ASM. I have a friend who is just finishing the design of a LIGHT SWITCH -- written in ASM. I haven't check in some years but the biggest volume parts were things like HC08's. Nowadays, PICs (if you treat the entire family as a single 'part') probably are king of the heap. Amazing when you think of how many PC's there are and realize how *small* that number is compared to all these other things! I am just finishing a proposal for yet another product where I am *sure* the client won't want to spend the money to support a HLL. (Of course, he will undoubtedly grumble at the cost of NOT using one, too!) Well, when I look at all of the PRODUCTS out there, I guess us 100 engineers must be writing a sh*tload of code!! IMO, the key difference is you write these applications *once*. There are no bugs (allowed) and no "upgrades". You dare not have to RECALL 50,000 widgets because you made a mistake and need to fix it. So you get it right the first time and then the job is *over*. (e.g., my Nakamichi Dragons have a stupid little bug in the MCU that watches tape motion... no chance in hell that it will ever be fixed -- or even acknowledged!) But, thereafter, your production (and any savings from using a cheaper implementation) just keep adding up. Until you've had to reuse *bits* in a particular *byte*, you're not really dealing with low cost items. :-( It's really difficult to make the transition to resource-rich applications... it's hard not to count clock cycles, measure stack penetration (do people even *know* how deep the stack needs to be on modern desigs? Or, do they just keep bumping it up until the code works??), pare data down to the smallest necessary size, etc. (I still cringe every time I use an int for a bool! :>) Thankfully, most HLL's make bit-banging really difficult. --don