On 29 August 2012 01:53, Tony Harminc <t...@harminc.com> wrote: > > Well, this one is perhaps the perfect example - jocular, of course (as > made all the clearer by the commented version), but still the sort of > thing that was to be found in real programs. My suggestion to use > familiar sequences is to avoid the need to sit up and pay attention > too often. There are programming paradigms or one might simply say > "chunks" that the experienced eye and brain see and digest as a unit. >
Even more pleasant when the abstraction can be done in a macro and actually leave just that one unit. I very much like macros that load and store fields based on the length. But obviously the macros add to the vocabulary and will make the reader sit up more often wonder what that particular macro does. I have no idea where the break-even point for that is, but I think that when the same idiom is copied 10 times in a module, the programmer missed an opportunity. And if it's just needed in that module, why not keep the macro there and avoid bothering another module. This is also the reason why I think exploiting the full instruction set should not be based only on availability of the machine. You can't stop educating people for 20 years "because nobody writes assembler" and then expect them to read assembler code in real time when they have to look up a lot of the instructions. Anyone seen what the zEC-12 brought us as new instructions? Rob
