On 6/15/07, Don Dailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
These arguments are based on the assumption that the human can't do as well as the computer for certain tasks. A custom designed memory manager by a person who knows what he is doing will be faster than an automatic generalized algorithm and assembler code written by a human who actually knows what he is doing will always be faster than C code written by a compiler. Of course the big variable here is how many programmers have the expertise to out-code the compiler. These statements are probably mostly true for most people and most programs.
Well, it's not just a matter of skill. There is also the question of what the code will look like after the assembly language expert is done. Sure, a person can inline, unroll loops, do common subexpression elimination, and all the other tricks that compilers can do. But if you do that at the source code level, what do you do when you want to change something? It's a dead end. (On the other hand, what could a good programmer do with an application-specific code generator using something like LLVM?) - Brian _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
