optimizing compilers vs. optimizing programmers

[Marty Sasaki]

> In the end, VMS got written mostly in assembler anyway (unless they have
> gone and re-coded later version, which I doubt, but stranger things
> have happened). I have it from several sources that the reason this
> happened was because a certain prominent DEC individual decided that
> no compiler could write code as good as his assembler (ie it wouldn't
> be fast enough). So much for consistency...
> 
> Laura Creighton
> utzoo!laura

VMS version 1 was written mostly in assembler. Parts of version 2 got
rewritten in Bliss. The most notable of the rewrites was the file system
ACP (the thing that converts file names into physical disk block numbers).
Andy Goldstein rewrote it in Bliss and carefully wrote some of the routines
in assembler to compare against the Bliss. The Bliss generated code was
smaller.
-- 
			Marty Sasaki
			Havard University Science Center
			sasaki at harvard.{arpa,uucp}
			617-495-1270