[identity profile] joedecker.livejournal.com 2009-12-20 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
If you've ever looked at the VAX instruction set,...

...and lived to tell the tale....

Yeah. The polynomial evaluation instruction on early Vaxen was slower and larger than DIY evaluation, as I recall. (This may have been microcode version and/or VAX model dependent). It made me laugh many a time.

( But then, I actually liked the nasty complexity of early DCL quoting, so,... )

[identity profile] lightning-rose.livejournal.com 2009-12-20 09:46 pm (UTC)(link)

For a long time I thought the early RISC proponents just had a sour grapes attitude because they weren't smart enough to write a compiler that could make use of the VAX instruction set. :)