For a "folk treatment" of this observation, hunt down "The Story of Mel,
a Real Programmer", via your favorite search engine.  I like the prose
version, myself. =3D]

One of the few tech anecdotes that definitely counts as culture. =3D]

--Matt

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Russell McMahon [mailto:apptech@PARADISE.NET.NZ]
>Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2002 3:11 PM
>To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>Subject: Re: [PIC]: How efficient Asm vs PB etc.
>
>
>And .... :-)
>
>It is POSSIBLE in very special circumstance for a compiler to produce =
code
>which is so efficient that, if an assembler programmer ever produced =
the
>same code,  you should immediately fire them for writing it. eg a =
relative
>jump that jumps into the middle of a multibyte instuction that uses =
PART of
>that instruction as a different instruction. I have seen that done =
(code was
>probably written in assembler). Such techniques are entirely acceptable =
for
>a machine based system as the assumptions and circumstances which allow =
them
>to be made are tracked at compile time. For a human assembler to =
produce the
>same result would require a level of documentation which nobody would =
ever
>write and nobody else would ever read or understand and the conditional
>assembly required to support it would be "interesting".

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