Csound Csound-dev Csound-tekno Search About

Re: prettyness of code

Date1997-02-18 19:45
FromDavid Madole
SubjectRe: prettyness of code
> 

The reason the inner loops of csound are the way they are is that, in
my opinion, they are almost directly translated from their music-11
equivalents in PDP-11 assembler code, code with which I was familiar.
Ergo the gotos, labels, etc., which as I remember it had the same
names.

Whether the translation was done *SO* directly for the sake of efficiency
(C compilers were pretty stupid back then) or whether the structured
possibilities of C were not immediately obvious to BV only he knows
for sure.  The one true reason to go to C was cross platform potential.

People forget that csound had a PDP-11 assembly ancestor, probably because
you needed a PDP-11 to run it.  Ergo Csound, and some of the idiosyncracies
of the code.

Dave

Dave Madole
Technical Director, Center for Contemporary Music
Listserv Administrator

Mills College
Oakland, CA 94613
510-430-2336

madole@mills.edu

Date1997-02-18 21:10
FromRichard Karpen
SubjectRe: prettyness of code
And don't forget that before Music-11 there was Music360 which ran
on the IBM-360!! Even that system, way back when, allowed one to
add their own unit generators as Fortran subroutines! 

RK

On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, David Madole wrote:

> > 
> 
> The reason the inner loops of csound are the way they are is that, in
> my opinion, they are almost directly translated from their music-11
> equivalents in PDP-11 assembler code, code with which I was familiar.
> Ergo the gotos, labels, etc., which as I remember it had the same
> names.
> 
> Whether the translation was done *SO* directly for the sake of efficiency
> (C compilers were pretty stupid back then) or whether the structured
> possibilities of C were not immediately obvious to BV only he knows
> for sure.  The one true reason to go to C was cross platform potential.
> 
> People forget that csound had a PDP-11 assembly ancestor, probably because
> you needed a PDP-11 to run it.  Ergo Csound, and some of the idiosyncracies
> of the code.
> 
> Dave
> 
> Dave Madole
> Technical Director, Center for Contemporary Music
> Listserv Administrator
> 
> Mills College
> Oakland, CA 94613
> 510-430-2336
> 
> madole@mills.edu
> 
> 
>