From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2006-07-29T04:20:05+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C - Part 2, comparing C, Ruby and Java

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> In my younger days, I did a lot of development in assembler languages,
> and for many years my main high-level language was FORTRAN. Towards the
> end of my FORTRAN days (about 1990) I was still dropping into assembler
> for speed, even though the (FORTRAN) compilers were quite good by that
> time. C compilers really sucked, especially for numerical applications.

So you know only clunky, crude, archaic languages, the newest
of which dates back to 1973 or earlier. Someday you ought
to move out of the dark ages and program in Ruby.

>
> Now here's where I'm going to put on my asbestos suit. I think the
> difficulty of C development is *vastly* exaggerated by the fans of
> "dynamic/scripting/interpreted" languages! In addition, I think the
> difficulty of *assembler* development is vastly exaggerated

(Note that Eddie is no fan of Ruby.)

One or more of these is true:

1. You don't program in Ruby.
2. You're not thinking.
3. You're not being honest.
4. You're simple-minded.

Compared to Ruby, programming in assembly language is very
tedious, very error-prone, very time-consuming, and laden
with a multitude of miniscule details.  To a lesser degree,
the same is true of C.  And assembly code, of course, is not
portable to another processor.