Re: Is it too hard to program for the Apple?

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> wrote:

> Michael Black wrote:
> > On Mon, 22 Feb 2010, D Finnigan wrote:
> > 
> >> Thanks to everyone's responses, I've decided to slow down, man up, and
> >> learn
> >> to program in C for the Apple IIe, and also hopefully learn more assembly
> >> as
> >> well.
> > 
> > Assembly is pretty fast, C is really slow.
> > 
> 
> Slower even than Applesoft? That's not the impression that I got.

It is the compile process which is slow (if you have the C compiler
running on an Apple II). Code execution varies depending on several
factors, but if compiling to native code it should be much faster than
Applesoft. Interpreted code would probably be similar to Applesoft.

I well remember the howebrew bulletin board system which a friend of a
friend wrote in Aztec C. It had something like fifty source files,
required the use of dynamically swapped modules to fit everything into
memory, and had to use interpreted code rather than native code due to
memory constraints.

A compile and link for the system was more than 10 hours, I think. It
didn't perform very well either (but with a 2400 bps modem, much could
be forgiven).

I ported the whole shebang to the Apple IIgs with ORCA/C and got it down
to about half an hour to build. It also ran a lot faster due to avoiding
dynamic loading and using native (16-bit) code.

It got as far as a 28k8 modem before we retired the system in favour of
a Mac running something more modern.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz