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Date:	Thu, 7 Aug 2003 08:52:08 PDT7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Re: Warpstock 2003 Presentation

Content Type: text/plain

Tom Novelli wrote:
>
> There's a proliferation of 100% assembler kernels and
> programs now, mostly written by teenagers.. for example,
> Asmutils-0.16 'grep' is about 100 times slower than GNU
> grep! I managed to write a (highly simplified) grep in
> assembly, which matched GNU grep's performance but didn't
> exceed it. These kids need to learn another language..
> and some decent algorithms :)

"and some decent algorithms" is a good point. I don't remember Lynn
discussing that.

> is all the complexity of the 1960's languages still
> necessary? Even C seems like overkill. Portability
> isn't always worth the trouble. If some radically
> different machine hits the market in 10 years, that
> seems like a good time to rewrite code.

So the language may change but the algorithm will stay the same, yes?

Then for portability and future value the algorithm shouldn't be written
in some current HLL.

You're laughing at my quest for English as a programming language.
Perhaps you wrote COBOL at one time (I did). Perhaps you see some
potential problems (Bob mentioned ambiguity). Perhaps you hated your
high school English teacher.

But English would work. I wish I could be at the next Programming SIG
and participate in a workshop where we could try some chalkboard
programming in English and see if it was workable. I think it is.

Here's an English language "program":

Read the source file and write all records to the output file.
The command line contains the source and output filenames.

I don't see any problem in parsing and compiling it.

- Peter

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