C is a portable assembler with delusions of grandeur

Topic title to irk some, amuse others. ;-)
Note, by the way, this has been posted to the “Aldershot” forum (perhaps where it belongs!).

I do not think that there to many that consider VB a USABLE COMPILED to native object code language, it has always compiled to a Byte code (that was reworked to create .NET).

For stuff that made a lot of use of the Windows API, the benefits are minimal. For stuff that does a lot of calculations, the benefits are staggering.
This is VB6, BTW. I tend to write most of my code in VB5 compiled to P-code (because the interative help got “broken” in VB6 when they ditched the .hlp file and moved to that interactive book thing). Plus, my library installer is for VB5. I’m too lazy to build an installer for VB6…

[edit: and if you compile to native code, you still need all those bloody big DLLs as they hold the VB parts…]

As to the statement of the C Library statement, _kernel_swi() is not an ANSI C intrinsic. And I had made my previous statement as a point that the C standard library is usualy part of the language. Thus it does have to be implemented at some point.

Yes, I am well aware of that. You said that you believed that it would be
necessary to use assembler in implementing stdlib – and my reply was that it may be possible to implement that library in C (ie with no assembler) using _kernel_swi() for most of the OS calls. You would be on much solider ground if you said about implementing longjmp() or such. ;-)

Of stdlib, there are – as far as I can see – only three places where assembler will be required.

Note – it won’t be optimal, obviously, but that wasn’t the discussion.

• atof, atoi, atol, strtod, strtol, strtoul – doable either in C or tossing the thing to OS_ConvertXXX.
• rand, srand – it’s just a complicated equation right? doable.
• calloc, free, malloc, realloc – doable, either by allocating space beyond the program extent and managing it ourselves or by using OS_Heap on it. If realloc is expected to move itself, expect performance to suck. ;-)
• abort, exit – should be doable – call OS_Exit or raise an error
• getenv, system(chain:) – should be doable
• bsearch, qsort, abs, div, labs, ldiv – doable (but qsort will be more like treaclesort)

Here’s where you’ll need assembler:

• setting up environment and handlers
• atexit – possibly could be done in C, though
• system(call:) – because it will require messing with the environment outside of the C runtime.

Alternatively, one could implement the entire Clib in assembler. Whoo! ;-)

Why were we discussing this anyway? I forget…

Now I relize that this thread is now way way off topic.

Yup, which is why this is now making itself at home in Aldershot.

Who on earth wrote that VB was reworked to create .NET? .NET (the CLR and so on) is not even remotely like VB, and to claim that it is is woefully misinformed. Sure, there’s a VB.NET language, but completely different to manky old VB. Still as clunky as anything (we use it at work). The CLR is massive compared to legacy VB/VBA and makes it a whole lot easier to do things. It has a proper, up-to-date UI library in WPF and modern frameworks like WCF that let you do things that VB couldn’t even think of doing.

“Bloody big DLLs” – really? A quick check on my Windows 7 install shows that MSVBVM60.dll is 1.4MB in length. Is that “huge”? Perhaps that would be an issue if we were still using PCs with 20MB hard drives and 4MB of RAM.

It beggars belief that, in 2013, people are still writing things in VB (6, let alone 5). Do you use tape drives and 8" floppies as well? How about Hercules video and ISA expansion cards?

“Bloody big DLLs” – really? A quick check on my Windows 7 install shows that MSVBVM60.dll is 1.4MB in length.

And the other stuff VB expects to run with? While stuff is part of the Windows, VB likes to have OCXs.

Is that “huge”?

When a 350k program wants to come along with >3Mb resources, yeah, it is big.

Remember, I grew up with RISC OS so the size of stuff under Windows horrifies me.

It beggars belief that, in 2013, people are still writing things in VB (6, let alone 5). Do you use tape drives and 8" floppiesas well? How about Hercules video and ISA expansion cards?

VB5/6 works for me. I see no point learning something new just because what I am using is “old”…