Anthony Bennett <ben### [at] panamaphoenixnet> writes:

> assembly, but...I believe that POV-Ray could be improved with ASM. And I
> think that it indeed should be. Can you imagine how much things could
> speed up with some well placed optimizations?

No.  At least with dece^H^H^H^Hrecent compilers, the generated code is
as fast as (if not faster than) the one done by hand.  It optimises
plenty of things most of the programmers do not even think at all.
And, it keeps *portable*.  That's the keyword.  See how many people
are waiting for a Unix version of a C (supposedly portable) program
(POV-Ray 3.1 for instance).  Now try to imagine how long it would be
for them to wait for an assembly rewriting of POV-Ray on Sparc, PC,
Alpha, HP, everything...  Place yourself in their position.  Let's
assume you, the DOS'ers (including the Windowsers), are to be the last
platform on which the next version is released.  You will not see it
before two years.  Unacceptable, is it not?

My answer is clearly *no*.  Fast code is the compiler's job.
Compilers are pretty good at it (often better than human
programmers).  Humman's job is powerful code.

Roland.
-- 
Roland Mas

Sauvez un arbre, tuez un castor.

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