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From: mhamburg@mv.us.adobe.com (Mark Hamburg)
Subject: Re: The expense of call/cc (was R4RS)
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References: <36ut56$835@larry.rice.edu> <mhamburg-061094091103@macb022.mv.us.adobe.com> <1994Oct8.115151.17399@news.cs.indiana.edu> <hbakerCxEz5z.CEF@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 17:41:46 GMT
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In article <hbakerCxEz5z.CEF@netcom.com>, hbaker@netcom.com (Henry G.
Baker) wrote:
> 
> I think that one should keep in mind that architecture designs are
> extremely sensitive to the current set of benchmarks.  The moment that
> Micro$oft or Unix incorporates a heap-based strategy into the vast
> numbers of machines running this software, you will see the HW vendors
> fall all over themselves to make this stuff run fast.
> 
> For this reason, SW people (especially programming language people)
> should focus on issues other than brute efficiency on the existing
> stock of HW processors.  Issues such as modularity, ease of
> development and techniques that reduce and/or eliminate bugs should be
> considerably higher on the list.
> 
> The reason why stacks work so well on modern architectures is that for
> the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, CS professors pounded the idea into
> their undergraduates that stacks were a _good thing_ for higher level
> languages, where were also a _good thing_.  For the past 20 years or
> so, people like Hewitt, Sussman, Friedman, Wise and Wand have been
> extolling the virtues of continuation-based programming.  They've made
> some small progress -- the 'call-back' style of programming is nearly
> ubiquitous in modern window systems, and this has already forced Ada
> to retreat from its 'no functions as arguments' stone age philosophy.
> 
> As the MIT/Indiana/Princeton/... students wend their way to Seattle
> and Silicon Valley, I expect that they will eventually incorporate
> these ideas into the guts of a popular operating system and/or
> language.  When this happens, you can expect the HW vendors to quickly
> adjust their architectures to suit.
> 
>       Henry Baker
>       Read ftp.netcom.com:/pub/hbaker/README for info on ftp-able papers.

It would probably be nice if this were the case.  But remember that the OS
vendors are interested in selling software.  And if the performance of that
software on existing hardware is inadequate, it probably won't sell very
well.  It's one of those chicken-and-the-egg problems.

This also assumes a fair amount of enlightenment in Seattle.  Microsoft
seems pretty convinced that Visual C++/Basic is the answer.

Mark
