Re: High Level Language vs Assembly

Jim Granville <jim.granville@designtools.co.nz> writes:


....
> He is largely correct: At the most detailed, hand ASM can lead, but it
> is an unsustainable effort across a whole project, and more commonly
> is counter productive....


One interesting phenomenon I've observed (but for which I have no hard
data) is that the assembly advantage is unsustainable in *two* senses:
not only across a large program, but also across the lifetime of a
long-lived program that undergoes changes. The efficiency of the
assembly code seems to deteriorate fairly quickly as it is patched,
because no one is willing to go back to square one and globally
re-optimize all the things that were carefully optimized for the
initial circumstances. Instead, the patch is done in as local a
fashion as possible, being careful not to disturb anything else. -max

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