Re: Apple and the Holy War

[bctimes@hotmail.com (Forrest)]

Somewhere, pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:

>The Applesoft FP package wasn't that bad -- it compared favourably with 8080
>code running at twice the clock speed -- and then Applesoft yielded 9-10
>digits of precision while the 8080 code yielded only 7 digits of precision.

It was still a rush job and not optimized.  It would be interesting to see 
whether any speed enhancements were made to the FP code between Applesoft I 
and II, or indeed any changes at all.  (Goodness knows the Applesoft II 
garbage collection and string handling routines still had vast room for 
improvement, as the later efforts of Randy Wigginton and Alan Bird 
demonstrate.  Something like a hundred-fold speed improvement...)

>You suggest that I should have written that program in assembler.  If
>I had followed your edvice, that program would not have been completed.

You wrote that you never completed the Applesoft version and guessed at its 
speed.