On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 22:45:14 +0100, Rhodri James wrote: > Mixing Python and assembler is a bizarre thing to want to do in general, > but... > > On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:52:15 +0100, Steven D'Aprano > <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> wrote: > >> (3) Modern C compilers can produce better (faster, more efficient) >> machine code than the best assembly code written by hand. > > No. Modern C compilers often produce very good machine code, but the > best hand-written assembly code will be better. I can usually write > *very* marginally better code than GCC achieves at work, though 99% of > the time I don't because it would be a maintenance nightmare.
Not that I don't believe you, but that is an extraordinary claim that would require more evidence than just "Hey, some guy on the Internet reckons his assembly code can regularly out-perform optimizing C compilers" before I will change my opinion *wink* Of course, there almost certainly are special cases where the state of the art for optimizing C compilers isn't as good as a clever human, e.g. if you're writing for hardware where no optimizing compiler exists at all, or some tiny CPU without all the pipelines and predictive branching crap^W stuff they do these days. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list