From:	sparhawk AT eunet DOT at (Gerhard Gruber)
Newsgroups:	comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject:	Re: should i bother learning asm?? or just learn dx?
Date:	Sun, 09 Aug 1998 21:18:46 GMT
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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Destination: "Arthur" <arfa AT clara DOT net>
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 18:35:03 +0100:

>No, you can get GNU C++ for the ST and AFAIK it's updated regularly. In fact, it's
>not the best compiler on the ST market. The fact that the ST and Amiga had only an
>8MHz clock rate may have had something to do with it.

Definitely. The slower the machine, the tighter you have to go to the limit.
For most programs a DX50 allows very slack programming, but usually the blame
is not to put it on ASM vs. no ASM but rather to bad desgin. I once wrote a
program that should behave on Windows like a textscreen in order to port some
programs from DOS to Windows without changing them. At home I had a rather
fast computer and I didn't realize how slow my algorithm was. When I got to my
office I noticed this, because the computer I had there was rather slow. I
rewrote the algorithm and after that, the program was almost as fast in my
office as at home. The resulting loss of speed was due to Windows and I
couldn't do anything about it, even if I had used ASM. 90% of the programs I
optimize (I do that for a living) are ONLY optimized in design and bad
programming (like calling a function to retrieve a pointer several times in
one function instead of loading the pointer once at the entry and using a
local variable).

--
Bye,
   Gerhard

email: sparhawk AT eunet DOT at
       g DOT gruber AT sis DOT co DOT at

Spelling corrections are appreciated.

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