From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-09-25T11:08:35+09:00
Subject: Re: This is why Ruby 1.8.6 can never be made to run anywhere near as fast as Python 2.5.1

Bill Kelly wrote:
>> I think the o.p. isn't exactly a troll.  I think he is simply young,
>> naive, inexperienced, and presumptuous.  There seems to be some honesty
>> in his posts.
> 
> Yes, I got the same impression - until he made this claim:
> 
>> If I wanted blazing performance I would write Aseembly Language (been
>> there and done that back in the day when 8 bits was all there was) but
>> one must commit a lot of time to hand-crafting Assembly code and most
>> of the time I just don't have that much time to spend writing code.

Speaking as someone who spent a good portion of his career writing
assembly language, I can assure you that every assembly language
programmer ends up creating "domain-specific languages", libraries,
object frameworks, design patterns, etc. They may not have *called* them
that back in the "good old days", but that's in fact what they were.

Assembly language programming has a bad reputation, unjustified in my
opinion. And please, don't say, "C is an assembler language". It isn't
-- it's a high-level Algol derivative with pointers, indirect addressing
and bit-diddling, but it *isn't* an assembly language.

And I can remember a time well *before* "8 bits was all there was". The
smallest thing you could call a digital computer had 12-bit words, It
took some serious genius to make 4-bit and 8-bit computers. :)