Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-11-03 Thread français 
The Story of Mel is one such example of programmers that were unwilling to
accept that programming in machine code was no longer useful or relevant in
most situations.  Mel wrote machine code, even though he would have been
able to develop software that was almost as good in a lot less time using
assembly. A few programmers, including Mel, continued using machine code.

If you look carefully, you can find one or two people who sound a lot like
Mel at the OSDev forums. The biggest difference is that they think assembly
is the best language, but Mel thought machine code was the best.

Because exist people who sound a lot like Mel at the OSDev forums?

Because they think assembly is the best language?



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Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-11-01 Thread Stuart Henderson 
On 2015-10-30, français  wrote:
> Mel didn't approve of compilers.
>
> “If a program can't rewrite its own code”,
> he asked, “what good is it?”

Mel didn't have to deal with attackers from 2015, though he would probably
approve of some of their techniques.

The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread français 
Mel didn't approve of compilers.

“If a program can't rewrite its own code”,
he asked, “what good is it?”

Mel had written,
in hexadecimal,
the most popular computer program the company owned.

Mel loved the RPC-4000
because he could optimize his code:
that is, locate instructions on the drum
so that just as one finished its job,
the next would be just arriving at the “read head”
and available for immediate execution.
There was a program to do that job,
an “optimizing assembler”,
but Mel refused to use it.

“You never know where it's going to put things”,
he explained, “so you'd have to use separate constants”.

reference: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

John von Neumann, when he first heard about FORTRAN in 1954, was unimpressed
and asked "why would you want more than machine language?" One of von
Neumann's students at Princeton recalled that graduate students were being
used to hand assemble programs into binary for their early machine. This
student took time out to build an assembler, but when von Neumann found out
about it he was very angry, saying that it was a waste of a valuable
scientific computing instrument to use it to do clerical work.
reference: http://worrydream.com/dbx/


In the beginning we programmed in absolute binary...Finally, the more
complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised-after
more years than you are apt to believe During Which most programmers
continued Their heroic absolute binary programming. At the SAP team first
Appeared I would guess about 1% of the older programmers Were interested in
it-using SAP was "sissy stuff" and the real programmers would not stoop to
wasting machine capacity to do the assembly.Yes! Programmers wanted at part
of it, though pressed When They Had to admit Their old methods used more
machine time in locating and fixing up errors than the SAP program ever
used. One of the main complaints was When using the symbolic system you do
not know where anything was in storage - though in the early days we
supplied the mapping of symbolic to current storage, and believe it or not
they later lovingly pored over such sheets rather than They did not realize
a need to know information que if They stuck to operating Within the system
-no! When correcting errors They preferred to do it in absolute binary.

FORTRAN was proposed by Backus and friends, and again was opposed by almost
all programmers. First, it was said it could not be done. Second, if it
could be done, it would be too wasteful of machine time and capacity. Third,
even if it did work, no respectable programmer would use it -- it was only
for sissies!

Reference: Richard Hamming -- The Art of Doing Science and Engineering, p25
(pdf book)

The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

If yes, because?









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Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread Raul Miller 
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:13 AM, français <romaper...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

You are overgeneralizing from jokes.

--
Raul

Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread français 
Raul Miller wrote
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:13 AM, français 

> romapera15@

>  wrote:
>> The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?
>
> You are overgeneralizing from jokes.
>
> --
> Raul

Raul

Are jokes the quotes from John Von Neumann and Richard Hamming that I quoted
above?




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Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread Jack J. Woehr 

Kimmo Paasiala wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:13 AM, français <romaper...@gmail.com> wrote:

The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

You are overgeneralizing from jokes.

--
Raul


I believe you're feeding a troll.



Possibly just a silly person, and one whose English is limited.

Those *are* true stories. Their relevance to misc@ is questionable.

But they are indeed funny stories, even if we've all heard them many times
already.

If you read older programmer discussion groups, esp. mainframe groups, these
same stories are told over and over again.

Maybe we're just attracting an older crowd these days :)

--
Jack J. Woehr # Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of
www.well.com/~jax # thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe
www.softwoehr.com # with a fine understanding of human fallibility. - Carl
Sagan

[OT] Re: The OpenBSD developers approve ???optimizing assembler??? and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri 
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 06:33:39AM -0700, français wrote:
> Raul Miller wrote
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:13 AM, français 
> 
> > romapera15@
> 
> >  wrote:
> >> The OpenBSD developers approve ???optimizing assembler??? and compilers?
> >
> > You are overgeneralizing from jokes.
> >
> > --
> > Raul
> 
> Raul
> 
> Are jokes the quotes from John Von Neumann and Richard Hamming that I quoted
> above?

Other quotes comes to mind:

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."

The point is, time moves on.

-- 
:: Andreas Kusalananda Kähäri, Bioinformatics Developer, BILS,
:: Uppsala University, Sweden
::--
:: My other car is a cdr.

Re: The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?

2015-10-30 Thread Kimmo Paasiala 
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 8:13 AM, français <romaper...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The OpenBSD developers approve “optimizing assembler” and compilers?
>
> You are overgeneralizing from jokes.
>
> --
> Raul
>

I believe you're feeding a troll.