[Coco] Re: Possible OS-9 Project

[James Dessart]

On Saturday, October 18, 2003, at 04:40  PM, James Ross wrote:

>> It currently is a rare assembly language programmer that can really do
>> better than the optimizer on a good C compiler.
>
> I have seen this argument discussed to to nth degree on the ASM
> newsgroups.  In my opinion, there is no compiler than can beat hand
> assembly.  However, I can be wrong.  I was wrong once, the time I
> discovered I was mistaken about being wrong!  :)

With modern, super-scalar processors, a human CAN produce better code 
than an optimizing compiler, HOWEVER, it takes a lot of extra work.  
The general rule is: don't optimize before it works.  Once it works, 
you profile the code, see where it spends most of its time, and 
optimize that small part.  Because a lot of the time, the optimizations 
you make, without knowing what gets used the most, are not very useful, 
and make the code harder to maintain.

I didn't get my B.Comp.Sci. for nothing. ;)

James