HARRIS FLAME Re: SHORT vs. INT

[Barry Shein]

>From: ray at othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn)
>
>It is intersting to note in the discussions re short, longs etc. that
>portability seems to be regarded as a major reason-d'etre for much
>coding activity.
>
>All very well if portability can become ingrained in our way of thinking
>just as block-structuring has now become (to some), but it should be noted
>that in this big bad commercial world we (some of us) live in, very few
>software projects can afford to schedule "extra" time for designing in, and
>testing, the portability of code.  Yes, in the long run, it is maybe
>worthwhile, but often it falls into the same category as generalising your
>code as opposed to making it specific - a good thing to do, but often
>commercially/practically unjustified.

Astounding! I guess you have a right to your opinion, what company do
you work for and exactly what processor is your code tied to so I know
exactly when to sell short on your stock? DEC-20? IBM7094? Z80? TIMEX/1000?
DEC-10? 8008? PDP-8? DG/NOVA? SDS(XDS)? need I go on....

Maybe you should have a little chat with some of the vendors of code for
those machines about portability and it's relationship to commercial
survival, as the old expression goes, you more likely can't afford *not*
to spend the extra time. Sit down and extrapolate the life span of a processor
coming to market today (hint: it's shrinking.)*

Perhaps more practically, if you can learn to code reasonably portably,
you usually can avoid the major pitfalls and fix a piece of code to be
actually portable when the need arises without too much trouble (no
flames, I know, a 200,000 line system would be better off portable to
start, but if it's reasonable it could be fixed *more* easily than re-written.)

	-Barry Shein, Boston University

*exception: ibm370 architecture, give or take XA I assume it will be around
forever, tho that still might exclude new markets for your software.