Faraday cages ( was Re: staticy plastic tubs )

[woodelf]

Jim Leonard wrote:

> Jay West wrote:

> A compiler is supposed to generate assembler-level (machine-level) 
> constructs for what the high-level language is asking for.  Nothing is 
> more efficient than that.  If the compiler produced code that was so 
> incredibly obtuse and broken that it took longer to execute an operation 
> than an interpreter, the compiler was a piece of crap.

It could be that it is using 32 bit ints under FORTRAN as a default.
Looking at FORTRAN IV for the PDP-8 you have 24 bit ints standard
so all you integer math is a call to suboutines.

> I call serious BS on the statement "some interpreters were faster than 
> some compilers".  People are going to have to back that up with actual 
> examples before it becomes believable.
Some verions of FORTRAN for the PDP 11 was threaded code too.