Re: To RISC or not to RISC


Donkey wrote:

This is not a question of syntax, it has only to do with mnemonic
devices, syntax is an entirely different thing. Changing the word for
CAR does not alter grammar in any way.

I, for one, think that these mnemonic devices are very important and
would continue to be so even if A stood for "ant", B for "boy", C for
"cat", D for "dog" because letters seem to carry more 'identity' than
numbers. Numbered register names give you the feeling of indexing...
and if you're going to do that, you might be better-off doing it
according to byte-size the way we do for an array: for 32-bit
registers - r0, r4, r8, r12, etc.. {r1,r2,r3 don't exist}

Another thing, numbered registers feel like they are intended to be
used by a compiler rather than a human. If the compiler needs another
register to implement an algo, you can almost imagine it doing a "inc(
regnum )" to get that resource. There were several threads in this NG
about the importance of code readability with emphasis on "talking"
variable names, spacing, etc. Imagine what the code would look like if
all your variable names, proceedure names, etc. were numbers instead of
text. Not very readable, huh?

Perhaps this explains why we don't see an army of folk using Herb's
Daniella and the inroads into 64-bit asm are barely on the radar?

Nathan.

.

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