[Haskell-cafe] Re: In-place modification

[Sebastian Sylvan]

On 10/07/07, Aaron Denney <wnoise at ofb.net> wrote:
> On 2007-07-10, Sebastian Sylvan <sebastian.sylvan at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/07/07, Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> wrote:
> >> Sebastian Sylvan wrote:
> >> > On 10/07/07, Alex Queiroz <asandroq at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >>      So you think we use C because we like it? :-) When this
> >> >> revolutionary tool of yours arrive that compiles Haskell to PIC
> >> >> devices, I'm gonna be the first to use it.
> >> >>
> >> >
> >> > No, you use it because you have to, there is very little choice. Which
> >> > is exactly my point.
> >> >
> >> > I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that when nobody uses C for
> >> > desktop applications, games etc. anymore because there's a better
> >> > language available and widely supported, that some version of this
> >> > "next mainstream language" will make it onto embedded devices too.
> >> >
> >> > The revolution (tm) won't come at the same time for all domains. C is
> >> > probably used/supported in embedded devices mostly because it's
> >> > popular for non-embedded devices (not because C is somehow uniquely
> >> > suited for embedded devices). So what happens when something else is
> >> > popular, when most industries have stopped using C and almost nobody
> >> > coming from university knows it very well or at all? Isn't it likely
> >> > that a lot of vendors will write compilers targeting embedded devices
> >> > for this new popular language?
> >>
> >> Mmm... a garbage-collected language on a PIC with single-digit RAM
> >> capacity? That's going to be fun! :-D
> >>
> >> OTOH, isn't somebody out there using Haskell to design logic? (As in,
> >> computer ICs.) I doubt you'll even run "Haskell" on a PIC, but you might
> >> well use it to *construct* a program that works on a PIC...
> >>
> >
> > Yeah, and 640K should be enough for everybody... Again, the original
> > statement was about 20 years down the line. Go back 20 years and
> > people would say similar things about C (comparing it to assembly).
>
> And assembly is still widely used.  Moore's law as applied to the
> embedded domain has a lot of the transistors going to more, cheaper
> devices, not bigger ones.

Depends on your definition of "widely used". You'll always need some
low-level stuff at the bottom (e.g. for the page manager in an OS),
and if your device is nothing but "the bottom", well then that's what
you get.
Doesn't mean that assembly isn't "dead" in the most reasonable sense
of the word for the purposes of a discussion like this (i.e. nobody
chooses to use assembly when they don't need to). And that's what I
predict will happen (and already has in very many domains) with C.

-- 
Sebastian Sylvan
+44(0)7857-300802
UIN: 44640862