Tony Smith wrote:

> Not much.  So you get 100 man strong team together and they code away for 6
> months.  In machine code because that's the 'in' thing.  

If you really are into the 'in' things, that's a problem you should work
on.

> But that's irrelevant, of course you pick the faster one if everything
> thing else is equal.  

And in the meantime the company with the slower product goes out of
business. Some few made a bit of money, the society as a whole has to
pick up the tab. For some a viable life model... :)


>>> Or are you waiting for the C programmer to save the day with v4.56b?
>> 
>> You're good in setting up strawmen, or at least are trying to be.
>> But it may be that you don't have to wait... there's competition out
>> there, even for autorouters.
> 
> But the customers are locked in to their existing product.  No-one
> will switch as you need to do all your libraries again.  But that's
> irrelevant too.

Autorouters are often stand-alone apps that integrate with many layout
programs, because the ones that come with layout programs often are not
considered to be that good. So there's very little locking in with
autorouters.

Where are you trying to get with all this?


>>> No, I meant C.  C & a HHL language can both compile to something
>>> that's pretty much indistinguishable.
>> 
>> Indistinguishable in what sense?
> 
> To the user.

In some cases. GUI apps that don't do much and most of the time wait for
user input are such cases. But not anything that does some real
computing. Try to decrypt, sort and encrypt gigabyte files in
QuickBasic... and try to get your users to actually wait for the result.


> I used to write in both.  The compiled QB programs ran just as fast as
> compiled C ones, and TurboC & TurboPascal probably did too.  

FWIW, I think (even though I don't have any numbers anymore) that it was
generally easier to write fast programs with Turbo Pascal. AFAIR this
compiler was really good.

> (Hence MS dropping the compiler in VB to make C++ the 'better'
> choice.)  

This sounds as if you just made it up. 

It didn't make much sense to make a VB compiler... the language was not
designed for ultimate speed anyway, the goal was different. And for
Microsoft, neither C nor C++ was a real focus at any time. As you can
see now... they're all about VB and C#, and for neither there is a
native compiler; C++ (for which there is a native compiler) is a real
step child, for example in terms of IDE support.


> Or just buy a library where some other poor sod has done the hard work
> for you.  

See, there are people happily making their living with this sort of
thing. Would you say they should do it in QuickBasic?

> The car analog for this thread is arguing whether your car needs a
> rear wing on it.

What's your point, really? You say "no need for C", but then you say
"whenever you need something fast, buy something that's written in C by
someone else", which seems to imply that there is a need for C (doesn't
matter who has to write it). Then you come with odd analogies...

So what's your point? Too much time on your hands?

Gerhard
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