Programmer's conundrums

[Don Y]

Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> On Tuesday 04 April 2006 08:53 am, Don Y wrote:
>> I have a friend who is just finishing the design of a LIGHT SWITCH --
>> written in ASM.
> 
> *boggle*
> 
> Why?

It is a very clever light switch!  :>  (sorry, I can't
speak about it until he files...)

> <...>
> 
>> It's really difficult to make the transition to resource-rich
>> applications... it's hard not to count clock cycles, measure stack
>> penetration (do people even *know* how deep the stack needs to be on modern
>> desigs?  Or, do they just keep bumping it up until the code works??), pare
>> data down to the smallest necessary size, etc.  (I still cringe every time I
>> use an int for a bool!  :>)
> 
> Sounds a lot like the way I tend to approach things,  too.

<shrug>  Depends.  If I don't have resources, I live with
what I have.  If I *do* have resources, then I take full
advantage of them!   E.g., I have an embedded device that
I am working on now that will have over a gig of RAM in it.
Very nerve-wracking to p*ss through memory like that but
it needs a lot of resources to do what it needs to get
done (and there is far too much code for it to be
maintainable with a penny-pinching approach!)