From: wkt@tuhs.org (Warren Toomey)
Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive?
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 09:35:43 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20160103233543.GA10102@minnie.tuhs.org> (raw)
I just re-found a quote about Unix processes that I'd "lost". It's by
Steve Johnson:
Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that
function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started
writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out
that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code
was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis
had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked...
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychapter.html
Steve, can you recollect when you said this, was it just a quote for
Eric's book or did it come from elsewhere?
Does anybodu have a measure of the expense of function calls under Unix
on either platform?
Cheers, Warren
next reply other threads:[~2016-01-03 23:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 33+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-01-03 23:35 Warren Toomey [this message]
2016-01-03 23:53 ` Tim Bradshaw
2016-01-04 0:01 ` John Cowan
2016-01-04 4:40 ` Armando Stettner
2016-01-04 8:52 ` Tim Bradshaw
2016-01-04 17:29 ` Larry McVoy
2016-01-04 13:50 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-05 2:00 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-05 15:13 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-05 16:46 ` John Cowan
2016-01-05 17:33 ` Diomidis Spinellis
2016-01-05 17:42 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-05 17:28 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-05 17:43 ` Clem Cole
2016-01-05 17:46 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-05 18:03 ` Warner Losh
2016-01-05 18:24 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-05 20:26 ` scj
2016-01-05 20:49 ` John Cowan
2016-01-05 23:24 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-01-05 23:55 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-01-04 0:00 ` John Cowan
2016-01-04 0:42 ` scj
2016-01-04 11:35 ` Tony Finch
[not found] <mailman.3.1451865187.15972.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2016-01-04 1:08 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-01-04 1:29 ` Larry McVoy
2016-01-04 1:31 Noel Chiappa
2016-01-04 2:24 ` scj
2016-01-04 4:24 ` Larry McVoy
2016-01-04 1:59 Norman Wilson
2016-01-04 15:09 ` John Cowan
2016-01-04 2:21 Clem Cole
2016-01-04 12:53 Noel Chiappa
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