Just catching up... David Stokes wrote:
> I think Steve is talking about different people/groups basically > doing their own thing and ending up with lots of probably > undocumented little macros, and I agree that that is worse than > useless for the wider world. Thanks for your comments. Undocumented little macros written by people groups with an exagerated idea of their value and not much clue about their cost can be part of the problem. But I think there are more dimensions to it, in particular time. Much of the Assembler code that exists today was originally written decades ago (quite a lot of it by me) and I expect that much of the code written today will still be in use for many decades. Being old, I have had plenty of opportunity to observe what happens over time. Something like this, usually... Someone (maybe me) writes a macro that seems like a good idea. Maybe it even is a good idea. If it is a good idea and/or if people are compelled to use it then, over time, a growing mass of code uses the macro. Meanwhile, things change (24-bit -> 31-bit -> 64-bit, new instructions, ASC-AR mode, Interlocked Access Facility, realtive addressing, new programming standards, new documentation and testing technologies, etc). So someone may need to change the macro. Do I have the nerve to do that? How sure am I that all the existing code (in my case, thousands of programs) will continue to work after my change? How sure am I that all the machines running the code will support my changes? Who pays for the testing effort? Who pays for updating the documentation? Of course, it's not just one macro that might need need changing. How confident am I about changing all the macros that need attention? (Did I mention I see about 6500 members in my SYSLIB concatenation?) It's unsafe to leave it to the original authors, especially if they are no longer with us. Do I have time to even find the macros that need attention? Is it sensible to make that investment? There are large mutipliers. Best regards, Steve Hobson Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d'être obligé d'en pleurer Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU
