Beginning C++ in FreeBSD

[Sergey Zaharchenko]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 03:19:46PM -0700,
 Chris Ashlee probably wrote:
> 
> All of these are good points, and debunk assembly's supposed advantages. 
> But the difficulty of writing fast assembly code on any decent 
> architecture (ie. not x86) is really the least of its problems. The 
> worst of its problems:
> 
> 1) It takes longer to write,
> 2) It takes longer to debug,
> 3) It's much harder for others to understand,
> 4) It's MUCH harder to change,
> 5) It limits you to one CPU architecture.
>

These have been mentioned already; somehow, they didn't seem to persuade
someone we wished to persuade:)

> 
> But writing *everything* in assembly is not the way of good software 
> engineering, for all the reasons I mentioned above. While you write your 
> programs in assembly language, everyone else is writing code in half the 
> time, debugging it in a quarter the time, and it can be changed more 
> easily to add new features or adapt to changing requirements. And it 
> runs just as fast, too!
>
> The focus in software engineering these days is not on more performance: 
> we've already solved that problem. The focus is on developing things on 
> time, on budget, that meet the ever-changing requirements. Assembly is a 
> poor choice for all of these needs. Daniela, if you ever want to 
> collaborate on software projects with other programmers, you're not 
> going to be able to do it in assembly language. Bear this in mind as you 
> continue to learn as a programmer.
> 

I don't really like the `programming means managing time and budget'
approach. Too many people here in our university don't have the sense of
measure in these things, and they start mixing the process of
programming with the process of getting money for nothing:). But
maintainability is really important. So, for me, the 4) point wins, with
3) as its closest rival.

-- 
DoubleF
"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."
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