No, I accepted her argument that for conventional machine code compiled from a conventional high-level language, a human can fairly easily generate better code. But if you had read my posting *carefully*, I specifically protested that this is *not* the same problem as compiling horizontal microcode from a specialty source language. I *still* stand by my statement. The compiler produced better code in minutes than I could have produced in three months. Your argument seems to be that a compiler can't produce better code than a human with an infinite amount of time could. I'll concede you that point. Or maybe I won't. A compiler with an infinite amount of time could have simply tried every possible combination of control store bits (for the 512*72 example, 2^36864 possibilities), and run a set of test vectors against each candidate to determine which ones meet the specifications, and of those which yields the highest overall performance. And by applying some relatively simple heuristics, the number could be reduced from 2^36864 down to a number that, while still huge, could at least be done during the remaining life of the universe. But this is irrelevant, because neither the human nor the computer has an infinite amount of time available. If my job had depended on finishing the project in question without using the compiler, the only way to do it would have been to expand the control store to 768 or 1024 words, because after spending a lot of time writing microcode by hand, it would probably have been larger than 512 words. It was the use of the compiler that allowed me the luxury of shrinking it to fit in the 512 words available. Without using the compiler, there is no way in hell that I would have had time to do such a thing. It is instructive to note that when I was trying to squeeze the 514 words down to 512, I discovered that the compiler had succeeded in combining several things that I wouldn't have easily found, because the compiler is actually *better* at doing data flow analysis than I am. That's not because the compiler is inherently more clever than I am, but because it is not subject to the Hrair (sp?) limit as I am. It's not more clever, but it's more tolerant of doing tedious recordkeeping and matching. Of course, if I had the time to meticulously do the same thing, I obviously could do at least as good a job of data flow analysis as the compiler. But in practice that's simply not going to happen. Life's too short. Most everyone in this discussion is just parroting the conventional wisdom that compilers don't generate code as compact or efficient as humans can, without considering the possibility that for specific problems and under specific constraints, they actually can be *better*. I'm absolutely willing (and eager) to concede that in the general and unconstrained case, the conventional wisdom holds true.