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Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 14:17:42 -0800
From: Chris Pressey <cpressey@catseye.mine.nu>
To: Colin Percival <colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk>
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Subject: Re: FreeBSD Most wanted
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On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 21:53:51 +0000
Colin Percival <colin.percival@wadham.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> At 21:44 06/03/2004, stephan mantler wrote:
>  >Also, to get a bit closer to the original topic. I can't remember
>  >where I
> >read this (DDJ probably), but apparently programmers who have a deep
> >understanding of computer architecture through low level programming
> >also produce "better" code in high level languages. My interpretation
> >is that they are simply feeding the compiler a better foundation to
> >work with.
> 
>   Having seen quite a lot of undergraduate "computer science" students
> over past decade, I can certainly support that interpretation.  Nobody
> quite understands why hash tables are not a perfect data structure
> until they've tried to implement one in assembly language.  (And,
> after performing such a task, few people will use hash tables without
> asking themselves, at least for a moment, if there might be a cheaper
> solution to the problem at hand.)
> 
> Colin Percival

Not sure what you mean here... surely it's no easier to implement (say)
an AVL tree or a red-black tree in assembly?

In fact, I'd think a hash function would often be a good candidate for
hand-coded assembly - if you want to play "Beat the Compiler" :)

-Chris