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LCA: Lessons from 30 years of SendmailLCA: Lessons from 30 years of SendmailPosted Feb 4, 2011 7:34 UTC (Fri) by yoe (subscriber, #25743)In reply to: LCA: Lessons from 30 years of Sendmail by HelloWorld Parent article: LCA: Lessons from 30 years of Sendmail
I find it interesting that you detract from C as an unsafe language by advocating for assembler.
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LCA: Lessons from 30 years of Sendmail Posted Feb 4, 2011 23:45 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I find it interesting that you detract from C as an unsafe language by advocating for assembler. He didn't advocate for assembler. It was reductio ad absurdum -- if fast is the only consideration, you would use assembler. Since you don't use assembler, fast is not the only consideration. Since fast is not the only consideration, maybe you should consider safety. Or lower development cost (with which you can probably pay for the extra hardware you need compared to the C or assembler implementation at the same speed).
LCA: Lessons from 30 years of Sendmail Posted Feb 5, 2011 2:07 UTC (Sat) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]
Actually, even if speed is your only consideration you are still likely to be better off using C rather than assembler where possible. A decent compiler can generate better-optimized code from C source than all but the best assembler programmers could write by hand.
That is not to say that there are no other relevant considerations, but other languages are not necessarily any safer or easier to develop in than C; it varies depending on the project. Sometimes there really is no other viable alternative. For example, the only other realistic systems programming language I know of is D, which (while otherwise a great language) is not as portable as C (yet), nor nearly as well established so far as libraries and tool support are concerned.
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