Re: [ossig] (Fwd) STI News: Firm discovers good IT help hard to find

["TM Tan (aka Meng)" <tmtan@tm.net.my>]

Hi Hanxue

> So let me get to the part where I disagree first (kinda rude and untactful,
> but I prefer to get over the "unpleasant" facts first).

not rude or untactful at all :)
 
> I know that those from the "old school" are very familiar with the ins and
> outs of the PC, right down to machine language. That is of course very
> useful. Heck, even the BSOD in windoze will show the stack trace and
> register values. But the thing is we cannot just build complex software
> using assembly or other low level languages, hence, the need for higher
> level abstractions.

depending on the nature of the beast. For many general purpose apps, yes, high level 
languages are the way to go...saves one heck of a lot of development and debugging time 
compared to assembly. Portability too is dependent upon high level langs. However, there 
are a great many things which still need good assembly language skills, if your optimising C 
compiler isn't optimising enough for perf critical modules, only inline assembly language will 
get that extra perf. What I mean by hand optimisation is the code is first written in C or 
whatever, compiled into assembly language and someone then looks through the asm code 
to improve it manually or even recoding critical modules in asm from scratch.

Sadly many developers nowdays just rely on ever increasing CPU clock speeds to hide their 
bad code. Device drivers are another class of software which really need hand optimisation. I 
know of many games developers who still do hand optimisation to squeeze that last ounce of 
perf.

> According to Frederick Brooks (did I get the name correct? He wrote The
> Mythical Man Month, more on that later) 

yep, Brooks

> And yes, people should just read those classics such as "The Mythical Man
> Month". It is really a timeless book. Just read, understand and apply and it
> will surely help out a lot in improving software quality and software
> project management issues.

TMMM concerns principles....principles usually stand the test of time unless something 
revolutionary comes along and changes the principles. Sadly many of our young grads are 
not taught principles any more.
 

Cheers

Meng



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