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From: Kai Petzke <wpp@marie.physik.tu-berlin.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta
Subject: Re: No pointer in Beta
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 22:04:22 +0200
Organization: Technical University Berlin, Germany
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Baiss E. Magnusson wrote:

> Any comment from the Beta and/or Simula community on this.
>
> Cornelius Willis, cwillis@microsoft.com, is Microsoft's Director of
> Platform Marketing. He says, in response to 800 Words on Java from earlier
> today:
>
> ...
> Explain how to do [array arithmetic, bitmap operations, multimedia or any
> other large-scale data operations] efficiently without the use of
> pointers;
> ...

A) BETA has pointers (they are called dynamic references, though).

B) FORTRAN 77 does not have pointers.  Yet, it is considered one of (if
not *the*) most efficient language for doing operations on large arrays
of real and complex numbers.  Those operations are typically called
"numerical simulations".

C) Computer languages can pass along data to each other.  Use
[Assembler, C, FORTRAN] for those 5% of the code, that consume 95% of
the time.  Use a decent language for the rest.

D) Consider, that bitmap operations and multimedia are best performed in
dedicated hardware.  Some modern 3D video boards cost less than the
surcharge of a pentium MMX, and are nevertheless several times faster.



Kai