-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at
classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-
bounces at
classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of William Donzelli
Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 2:44 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: The lost art (Was: The VAX is running
And too few people who take the trouble to learn
the assembly bother
to learn the machine representation of the instructions--or the
architecture of the implementation. Even fewer learn how to time
instruction execution--perhaps it's no longer relevant.
All of this is now the job of the compiler.
It ain't 1980 anymore.
You've never found a compiler bug? :-)
Besides, my colleague who's writing the Massbus disk emulator doesn't get to use a
compiler. He's done line-by-line assembly code, squeezing out every unnecessary byte
and machine cycle. Don't tell HIM this sort of knowledge is no longer relevant. --
Ian