[TUHS] Algol68 vs. C at Bell Labs

[Random832]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016, at 16:57, Nemo wrote:
> I heard that a lot of the BIOS was a simple-minded translation of
> corresponding 8080-assembler.  I believe that; if you look at the
> horrible assembler, which was actually printed in the IBM Technical
> Manual, you could see that most 8086 extensions were not used.

Well, a new system means there are no expert programmers for it, who
have learned all the tricks and how it all fits together. You see
something similar in environments like console video games, with a
progression of higher-performance games within each console generation
as programmers learn to wring more out of the same hardware.