Re: Low-level vs. High-level programming (was My First Computer)

["Kevin Lawton" <kepla@btinternet.com>]

Kelly Hall <hall@priest.com> wrote:
| "Matthew Russotto" <russotto@grace.speakeasy.net> wrote in message
| QECdnXzeWrOgUm2jXTWc-w@speakeasy.net">news:QECdnXzeWrOgUm2jXTWc-w@speakeasy.net...
|| Sure, but you have the power to burn.  If something's going to be
|| used in a situation where it's lightly loaded or doesn't need to
|| perform well, by all means optimize for development time.  On the
|| other hand, if you're going to be running heavily loaded at the
|| limits of current hardware, you're going to need to spend some
|| development time looking at performance.
|
| Ahh, so the runtime nature of the task at hand has implications on
| one's choice of programming language?  That's a much different
| attitude than Kevin's, who seemed to imply high-level languages are
| bad bad bad and we should all be writing our RDBMS code in assembly
| because it's "more efficient".

Nope.
My point is that consumers (in the very widest sense) are paying for
immensely powerfull machines which only just manage to cope with the
application tasks put before them because of the proliferation of
inefficient software technology.
I am saying that it seems that many of the tasks which a typical 2 GHz PC is
bought for could be adequately performed by a less powerfull machine were
the software more efficient. Alternatively, more efficient software on
current machines should show better speed and functionality then is
currently seen. I've nothing against high-level languages - I've been using
them for long enough. My complaint is aimed at the recent trend towards
languages and techniques which are 'easier' and 'dumbed-down' leading to
large inefficient programs. Java is a typical example of this trend. As a
trade-off for being quick and easy (but not that quick or easy) to write and
portable across platforms, java gives away efficiency to just about every
other language I've used - except Basic, which was not created to be used
seriously.

| My attitude is, and has been for decades, have a big toolbox and use
| the right tool for the job.  :)

- and I wouldn't argue with that !
Kevin.