From: Tim Shoppa Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: The age of macro assemblers (was Re: Living legends) Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 11:19:20 -0400 Organization: Trailing Edge Technology Lines: 40 Message-ID: <373963B8.4B2BB416@trailing-edge.com> References: <372c641d$0$496@news.zetnet.co.uk> <7h1a5u$n81$3@ligarius.ultra.net> <7hbrpf$b7t$9@antiochus.ultra.net> <7hc13m$12eq$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: trailing-edge.wdn.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0 DEC 3000 Model 300L) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.erols.net!news-xfer.netaxs.com.MISMATCH!news-xfer.newsread.com!netaxs.com!newsread.com!netaxs.newsread.com!usenet Derek Peschel wrote: > Aside from being good evidence that MS actually had a -10 (I couldn't tell > if you doubt that or not), this example answers your questions. Their > methods were targeted at small computers, _and_ the method was more > important than the final product. ("Hey! Let's use an elaborate set of > macros that will allow us to crank out various versions of BASIC!") I bet > the macro method makes quick fixes and ugly tricks breed like flies. It > doesn't encourage custom coding either. The age of great Macro assemblers seems to have past, but IMHO the good macro assemblers (and I'm not talking about Microsoft macro assemblers, but real ones such as MACRO-10, MACRO-11, and others found on minis and mainframes) are far better than, say, macro expansions in C. Complicated data structures can be clearly presented if defined using well written macros, and a wide variety of target versions can be conditionalized with the resulting code looking much cleaner than, say, a widely ported C/Unix program. > I also think the organization of Microsoft as a company and the > personalities of its employees (including Bill Gates and Paul Allen and the > other people in charge) is a vital piece of the puzzle. Bill Gates is > surely an extraordinary businessman, but it may be that he just isn't/wasn't > a good programmer. He doesn't seem to care, anyway. I think the > organization reflects that. Either Steve Wozniak or Steve Jobs said they > have no taste. I like to say they have no sense of form (how things should > be laid out, whether programs, data structures, filenames, manuals, help > files, Web sites, companies, etc.) On mid-to-late-70's micros there were several development environments that were widely ported to diverse hardware and were excellent examples of documentation and data structures. The most obvious to come to mind is UCSD Pascal, though there were also some nice portable Forth and Smalltalk implementations. Clearly the marketplace doesn't favor such development environments because they seem to have disappeared and been replaced with the horrible hodgepodge of conditionalized C code we find commonly used on Unix and Windows boxes these days. Tim.