Re: HLA v1.78 is now available

T.M. Sommers wrote:
> Assembler Standards Committee wrote:
> > On 2005-10-15 Randy Hyde said:
> >
> >    > Hi All,
> >    > I've just posted a new version of HLA on Webster.
> >    >
> >    >  [ ... snip ... ]
> >    >
> >    > You can find the new download at the HLA download page:
> >    > http:// <flush>
> >
> >        Oh, goodie. More nutty
> >        "features" to make this
> >        unmaintainable sack of
> >        road apples even more
> >        bloaty than it is now.
>
> If it's unmaintainable, how come new versions appear every few
> months?
>
> --
> Thomas M. Sommers -- tms@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 -- AB2SB

The really amusing point in my mind is how people who know so very
little about the product seem to know what all of its faults are. I'd
say that HLA must be a pretty good product if all that its critics can
do is complain about the fact that a new version has new features (that
they don't particularly understand how to use).

BTW, for Annie's benefit, the "@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" compile-time function added about
100 lines of code to a compiler containing well over 100,000 lines of
code. The result, just on line count alone, is therefore only 0.1% less
maintainable than it was before. Given the dramatic performance
improvement gained during the compilation of large SWITCH macros, I'll
consider that to be a big win. Sometimes, the bloat of a few hundred
bytes (out of about 1-2 million) of memory is worth it. :-)
Cheers,
Randy Hyde