> > It's hard to
> > justify taking 10 to 20 times longer to produce a program
> 
> I wasn't going to get into this food fight, and was going to 
> silently ignore that the HLL folks are making the implicit 
> and sometimes incorrect assumption that assembler takes 
> longer to write.

No 'general truth' is true in all corner cases, but the consensus in
literature (and this agrees with my experience) is that programming
takes the same amount of time per line of code *regardless of the
language used*. In most cases a HLL will produce more per line, so it
will be more productive. But the figures I remember from literature were
more in the 2 .. 5 range. Bit twiddeling and accurate timing will favour
assembly (sometimes enough to reverse the advantage of an HLL into a
disadvantge), complex HLL constructs (when used appropriately!!!) (like
arrays, floating point, and some OO constructs) will favour a HLL.

I give programming classes in both HLL (C, C++) and assembler (PIC, ARM)
to both electronics and informatics students. It will not be a surprise
that the informatics students are better at programming, but in my
experience the difference is more pronounced for HLL programming than
for assembler programming. Or to put it in another way: electronics
students are comparatively better at assembler programming. I don't know
why, but this might partly explain why the piclist community is more
assembler-oriented than most other groups I know.

Wouter van Ooijen

-- -------------------------------------------
Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: www.voti.nl
consultancy, development, PICmicro products
docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: www.voti.nl/hvu
 
 


-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist