Oh man, do I envy you! Up until about 5 years ago, that was my shop too. Every byte we could save was gold. But now the Intel/"embedded" Linux monster has invaded and we write in C++ and solve our problems by throwing more CPU and memory at them. Sigh... Bill S. -----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic-bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of Bob Applegate via vcf-midatlantic Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2017 11:17 AM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Bob Applegate Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] COBOL: vintage vs. legacy code
On May 31, 2017, at 2:36 PM, Joseph S. Barrera III via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:00 AM, Brian Schenkenberger via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I've been writing assembly for 40+ years and fully expect to be writing it for another 10+. ;)
Are you asserting that, say, VAX assembly and 6502 assembly are the *same language*? :-)
Same concepts, even if the target processor is different. FWIW, I was in a code review this week for a few hundred bytes of assembly code. The number of people fluent in assembly at the company is very small, but this product sells several hundred thousand units a year and is very important. The code was in C using a highly optimizing compiler but it couldn’t quite squeeze the code enough once a new feature was added, and going to a slightly larger processor with more RAM (32 bytes) was about four cents more per chip, so switching to assembly was the best approach. Not all computers have 2 TB disk and 32 GB RAM. When you need to save a few bytes, assembly is your friend. Bob --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus