Agreed. "Compilers are more efficient than hand-coding assembler" is counter to what we learned as newbies but is now true.
Sometimes, however, "is X faster than Y?" is an amusing exercise. And certainly one can argue, as I did on the original thread here, that X is *better* (not necessarily faster) than Y. Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Cole Sent: Monday, October 16, 2017 9:24 AM To: [email protected] Subject: The Pointlessness of handwriting "efficient" code (was One Byte MVC Versus IC/STC) First, let me start by saying I am NOT talking about the kernel of sorting routines intended to sort records by the millions. Nor am I talking about any similar place where saving a few nano-seconds here and there might actually matter. If that's your concern, then this post is not for you. I am talking about typical logic whose execution frequency ranges from a handful per week all the way up to maybe a million times per hour. (Just guessing here, but it sounds good.) I'm also talking about hand coded Assembler. If you want to write efficient code, use a compiled language. Use C. Use Cobol. Use whatever. But don't use Assembler. Assembler is probably the worse language to choose. Why? Well, read on.
