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Subject: Re: Symbolic: A doomed effort, or it's time to get my lead-lined jockstr

Author: Tord Romstad

Date: 04:00:43 02/17/04

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On February 16, 2004 at 15:15:16, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>What Bob is saying (and I agree with this 100%) is that what you can do with a
>low level language is by definition a superset of what you can do with a high
>level language (given sufficient time/money/motivation).

True in theory, but not always in practice, when you have limited time and
resources.  And even when the final version of the program is written in a
low-level language, it is often a good idea to implement a prototype in a
high-level language first.

>Chess engines are usually small enough projects that it is possible to do
>everything in C.  Assembly is getting harder nowadays because you must have so
>many different versions: good assembly for P4 is not good assembly for Athlon,
>and of course an x86-64 version is completely different.
>
>But I think that a lot of programs (web browsers, word processors, etc) simply
>don't need to be fast and _should_ be written in a high level language.

Yes.  And even in programs which need to be fast, the performance-critical
code is usually just a small part of the whole program.  Writing this small
part in a low-level language should most often be good enough.

Chess programs are unusual in the sense that the performance-critical parts
of the code is a rather high percentage of the total program size.

>Sadly it is looking like that language will be C#, rather than ML or Lisp.

I am not sure precisely why you consider this sad, but if it is future job
opportunities you worry about, I think there is no need to be pessimistic.
There are jobs in ML, Lisp and other non-mainstream languages.  Of course
you will not find as many jobs as for C++, Java or C#, but there will also
be fewer applicants for ML and Lisp jobs.  I also think it is a fairly safe
bet that the average Lisp or ML job is much more interesting than the
average Java job.  You can also expect a higher salary (you are hard to
replace because few people know the language) and more talented and
knowledgable colleagues.

Tord



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