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Subject: Re: assembler vs. C

Author: leonid

Date: 12:32:53 11/09/99

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On November 09, 1999 at 14:05:56, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On November 08, 1999 at 06:02:53, leonid wrote:
>
>>On November 08, 1999 at 04:40:26, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>
>>>On November 07, 1999 at 22:58:55, leonid wrote:
>>>
>>>>If you write your chess program only for fun, use every language that you could
>>>>like. But if you expect that "others" should observe your happiness, use
>>>>Assembler. Only this language will give your game extra ply over others. It will
>>>>naturally induce into your game some extra glamoring brillances able to capture
>>>>the attention of human eyes. And since the human is a social animal that crave
>>>>for attention, Assembler is the only natural language for him to express
>>>>himself.
>>>
>>>Assembler won't yield an extra ply.
>>>
>>>bruce
>>
>>If extra ply signify game that goes five or six time more rapidly, Assembler
>>give you just this.
>>
>>Leonid.
>
>
>Not a chance. You'll get 20% faster, maybe 25%, and that's all.
>
>And you'll need 3 times more developpement time, and a lot of crazy bugs to
>chase.

>
>It's not worth it anymore. The time you spend on assembly programming, you'd
>rather spend it on algorithmic improvements. There are plenty of things to
>improve in any chess program. No current chess program is so perfect that the
>only thing left to do is to re-code everything in assembly.
>
>I even know some chess programmers who are porting from assembly to C. It's a
>wise decision.
>
>
>
>    Christophe


Disagree with you about the time (only 25%) and bugs, but maybe we speak about
two different things. About 25% the most - wrong. About writing the chess game;
we can speak about two different writing. I speak about writing the game almost
100% from your head, you, I presume, doing it after the theory that is already
there. When you write "your own" logic it will take anyway some considerable
time to achieve the final version. When you will take the logic of others the
time to realize your code could be quit short. Speeding this time even more
looks logical. About the bugs in Assembler. I don't think they are more prolific
that in C. Beside, it is much more difficult to find your bugs in the language
that is half secret to you, like C. On Assembler you see everything on the
surface and you are master of your code. Forgetting about theory, I can say you
that I have seen as much buggy Assembler written programs as the C one.
Rewritting the game on C have sense only because of portability and easy contact
with other programmers. Here, maybe, we agree.

Leonid.




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