Darren New wrote:
> I think the basic problem is that after the early 80's, people weren't
> designing programming languages based on 8-bit processors with 16-bit
> address spaces. I mean, C and FORTRAN were considered terribly wasteful
> of resources back when 1K of RAM was a lot of memory. :-)

I learned to micro-optimize with LEGO Mindstorms. It *interprets* bytecode,
and the interpreter runs on a tiny slow H8 microcontroller. I was writing
in NQC, btw, not the graphical system it comes with (the one connecting
command blocks like puzzle pieces). You could really notice the difference
of speed by just moving switch case labels around (most common/important
ones first so that it needs to do fewer comparisons before reaching them).

The hardcore guys were writing alternate firmwares :) I heard someone added
floating point support in less than 2KB, complete with the NaN and infinity
mess.

(And their children were probably using the graphical programming language
with the same robotics kit. Clearly a toy for all ages.)

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