Clyde, you are, without doubt, 110% correct! You sir, deserve a lot of respect for the superb software product you have created: C compiler for the PIC. Could I interest you at looking at ATMEL and Scenix? James ---------- > From: Clyde Smith-Stubbs > To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU > Subject: Re: PIC "C" Compilers...... > Date: Thursday, October 09, 1997 4:21 PM > > On Thu, Oct 09, 1997 at 06:14:27PM +0100, Jorge Ferreira wrote: > > > Its a long way from PDP-11 to a PIC, don't you think. > > Nope, all processors have their little subtleties. That's just a nice > example that I trot out from time to time. I should probably come up > with one for the PIC, I guess. > > > So fire me ;-). I've doing such things since I can remenber, its a > > matter of exploring the darkest aspects of your hardware (by the way > > The point is that using such tricks in hand-coded assembler greatly increases > the chances that later on you will change something that breaks your > clever optimization. A compiler on the other other hand rewrites the > assember code each time it compiles the source, so it can check > the validity of such clever tricks each time - you have to remember > to do it. > > > By the way compilers are made by programmers, aren't they, so I think > > all this discussion as no point at all, because the code a compiler > > Exactly my point; the limiting case of both hand-written and automatically > generated code is the same. It's just a matter of how much time you have > to spend to get there, and how much time you have to spend later > maintaining it. On a small project (say < 1K of code) it's not hard > to make a case for using assembler. As the project gets larger it gets > harder and harder to make that case. At some point the growing complexity > of the project makes it impossible to write in assembler (the time required > to write code grows exponentially with the size of the project). > > It is true that a good compiler can routinely out-code an average assembler > programmer. The difference between an average programmer and a hot one is > an order of magnitude or so. Of course no-one on this list is merely average :-) > > Cheers. > > -- > Clyde Smith-Stubbs | HI-TECH Software > Email: clyde@htsoft.com | Phone Fax > WWW: http://www.htsoft.com/ | USA: (408) 490 2885 (408) 490 2885 > PGP: finger clyde@htsoft.com | AUS: +61 7 3354 2411 +61 7 3354 2422 > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > ANSI C for the PIC! Now shipping! See www.htsoft.com for more info.