18 Sep
2002
18 Sep
'02
1 a.m.
At 08:54 AM 17/09/2002 -0600, Ben Franchuk wrote:
Huw Davies wrote:
I wasn't going to mention that but perhaps I should have. There were lots
of problems migrating
code written on Unix running on PDP-11s to VAXes (and other 32 bit
systems). You'd have thought
that this would have triggered the mindset of programmers not to make
unnecessary architectural dependencies when writing code but obviously not.
"He who ignores history is destined to repeat it" rings true here.
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies(a)kerberos.davies.net.au
| "If God had wanted soccer played in the
| air, the sky would be painted green"
The main issue is that whilst there are lots of C
implementations (which
allows for
portability) the fact that lots of people write very non-portable C is
bad. The
real killer (from personal experience) are those programmers who think
sizeof(int) == sizeof(*int). This breaks lots of "portable" code when moving
away from a typical 32bit machine (especially to alpha).
Or 16 bit code to a 32
bit machine.