From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm@mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2016 20:24:39 -0800 Subject: [TUHS] Early Unix function calls: expensive? In-Reply-To: <07cc4a0aa17d242be5e26bbcd66c1c55.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com> References: <20160104013151.C296718C0A0@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <07cc4a0aa17d242be5e26bbcd66c1c55.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com> Message-ID: <20160104042439.GR12305@mcvoy.com> > I used to tell people that the time required to make a good optimizing C > compiler grew as the cube of the size of the instruction manual, So this has nothing to do with Unix but it triggered this memory. My dad, physics prof, rhodes scholar, told me this when we started backpacking together: The population density drops like 1/r^2 the distance from the parking lot.