Is Faster Better?

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Brian Fairchild

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Posted by Brian Fairchild: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 07:12 AM

grohote wrote:

... but why to wait 30 seconds /or more/ for any programming? Next step was a logical and normal: JTAGICE MKII which can shrink 30s to 2s...

grohote wrote:

One day you may realize that some devices, and some tools are just... better.

Is faster better though? Doesn't the whole 'click and it's compiled' method simply remove thinking time? Time which would be better spent thinking about the problem rather than throwing a few random changes into the code?

How often do we see code on here which is, frankly, a pile of rubbish? Code which has been throw together with no thought? Code which evolves with no thought? Random modifications in some desperate attempt to solve a problem?

Like a lot of people here, I started writing microcontroller code when a compile/link cycle would take minutes. Long enough to walk to the coffee machine and back. Time to think through your next steps. And you know what? I'll bet we were just as productive as people are today with their instant results.

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avrcandies

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Posted by avrcandies: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 07:24 AM

I'll bet we were just as productive as people are today with their instant results.

Maybe you even experienced punch cards. Those undertakings really required some serious thinking and checking of what you were doing, since you didn't want to go through 100 cycles (and elevator rides to the card submission center) to get things right. Sometimes having it too easy invites apathy rather than using the efficiency boost to make things more bullet-proof.

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N.Winterbottom

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Posted by N.Winterbottom: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 07:35 AM

Brian Fairchild wrote:

How often do we see code on here which is, frankly, a pile of rubbish?

True - but the reason for that bad code is certainly NOT the ability to compile and flash the device within 2s.

PS: Aren't default programming speeds set fairly conservatively to comply with default clocking on new devices. Once you've programmed the fuses once (for external xtal or to remove the divide 8) the speed could be increased substantially.

grohote

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Posted by grohote: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 07:49 AM

Is faster better though?

The question is irrelevant. The speed can not replace the quality of the code, but the speedy programmer can help a lot. Nothing is that good as a solid desk check with a pleasure of great thinking. Start - think - stop - program. How often - sometimes, it takes time. Which is important, after all. You can not create ultimate code by using PonyProg or similar. Also, even the best toll, which JTAG is, can not help you with complicated spaghetti code (which careless ASM tends to be).

Given time, your JTAGICE MKII will be less and less debugger, I can assure you.

gchapman

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Posted by gchapman: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 12:15 PM (Reply to #3)

N.Winterbottom wrote:

PS: Aren't default programming speeds set fairly conservatively to comply with default clocking on new devices.

Programming speed is usually dependent on the nonvolatile memory controller.

N.Winterbottom wrote:

Once you've programmed the fuses once (for external xtal or to remove the divide 8) the speed could be increased substantially.

A rule is to use the same tools that an operator does (loader and bootloader)

Reason : Defect discovery by more operator-hours

"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller

gchapman

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Posted by gchapman: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 12:46 PM (Reply to #4)

grohote wrote:

The speed can not replace the quality of the code,

Can allocate some of the tool's compute power for static analysis though have to deal with the equivalent of Guru Meditation numbers (false positives)

grohote wrote:

Nothing is that good as a solid desk check with a pleasure of great thinking.

Code review is one of the best practices that's multiplied (others review in addition to self review)

grohote wrote:

Given time, your JTAGICE MKII will be less and less debugger, I can assure you.

Concur

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ka7ehk

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Posted by ka7ehk: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 04:03 PM

Speed is helpful but its not everything. Certainly, speed does not substitute for thinking.

When programming speeds were minutes (and there was no debugger), I compiled and tested sparingly. Now, with program load times in the range of seconds, I do many incremental build-and-test operations. I find that development time is a LOT faster because testing a few dozen lines is so much easier than testing a few hundred (and trying to figure out where the error(s) might be). This style only makes sense when the programming overhead is not so big but it does not have to be zero!

Jim

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david.prentice

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Posted by david.prentice: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 05:00 PM

ka7ehk wrote:

When programming speeds were minutes (and there was no debugger), I compiled and tested sparingly. Now, with program load times in the range of seconds

If you allow 10ms for a flash page-write to complete you are talking about 512 * 10ms for an ATmega1284. i.e. 5 seconds.

Most of the "programming time" is spent in USB / Serial data traffic and writing the SPI / JTAG commands.

The old AT90Sxxx chips took a LONG time to program the flash. Obviously the same amount of USB / Serial traffic.

The AT90S chips became obsolete when the Mega and Tiny chips appeared in the early 2000s.

Nowadays people use proper programmers. In the early days LPT and RS232 port abortions were common.

All the same. I am guilty of program first / think later. In the days of UV EPROM you had to think !!

David.

ki0bk

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Posted by ki0bk: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 05:19 PM

Brian Fairchild wrote:

Is faster better though?

Not according to my wife it's not..... Oh wait you were talking about programming time, sorry!

Well I can remember a time where it took almost an hour for my 6800 to boot up from a cassette tape before I could even think about starting to load up the first program in basic!

Then basic in ROM came along and thought I had died, then came floppy disks, not as fast but so much better....

Then there was DOS(Flex) and all those silly command line screwy words to remember, it's so much better now, with a drop down menu and a click of the mouse button....

Not going back, no, not again....

Spent one summer tuning a VAX for better operation, all I heard from the programmers was they no longer had time to fetch a cup of coffee after submitting their code to batch for compiling, too fast they said..... Now they HAD to be productive...

I'm retiring at the end of this week, more time to spend with family and some travel, I'll try to poke my head in, on occasion to see what's happening, I've enjoyed this forum very much, a great gang of Freaks it is!

Fly over Jim

FF = PI > S.E.T

grohote

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#10

Posted by grohote: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 06:00 PM

ki0bk wrote:

I can remember a time where it took almost an hour

... or a day, guess.

Looong ago (I was very young), an friend of mine designed and built his 8080 computer intended to help with EME on 432Mhz. It worked after a few corrections. EME, too (with 1kW lighthouse tube and lot of Yagis).

Memory was 2704, to correct something there was an UV lamp first... but the team managed it, eventually.

I do not know full details how they did it, in times before of PC... suppose 10 (?) switches for addr, 8 for data... a lot of thinking, desk check, team works... much longer than 2s.

Last Edited: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 06:12 PM

gchapman

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#11

Posted by gchapman: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 06:08 PM (Reply to #9)

ki0bk wrote:

I'm retiring at the end of this week, more time to spend with family and some travel,

Congratulations! ... and may you be in joy!

"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller

gchapman

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#12

Posted by gchapman: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 06:46 PM (Reply to #9)

ki0bk wrote:

Well I can remember a time where it took almost an hour for my 6800 to boot up from a cassette tape before I could even think about starting to load up the first program in basic!

Was thankful for the bootloader on an 1802.

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valusoft

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#13

Posted by valusoft: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 10:09 PM

ki0bk wrote:

I'm retiring at the end of this week, more time to spend with family and some travel, I'll try to poke my head in, on occasion to see what's happening, I've enjoyed this forum very much, a great gang of Freaks it is!

Congratulations Jim and very best wishes for a long and enjoyable retirement. Don't be a stranger.

Cheers,

Ross

Ross McKenzie, Melbourne Australia

clawson

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#14

Posted by clawson: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 10:40 PM

gchapman wrote:

Was thankful for the bootloader on an 1802.

wasn't really a bootloader - rather a very basic DMA controller

gchapman

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#15

Posted by gchapman: Mon. May 9, 2022 - 11:27 PM (Reply to #14)

Mask-programmable ROM in CDP1804; custom die CDP1802 had a small ROM (256-byte IIRC)

COSMAC ELF

The CDP1802’s Place in Microcomputing History

cdp1804.pdf

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clawson

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#16

Posted by clawson: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 09:56 AM

gchapman wrote:

custom die CDP1802 had a small ROM (256-byte IIRC)

Yeah but the "raw" Cosmac1802, which I had on the very first computer I ever owned, had no bootloader.

I began to doubt my memory but I just checked:

https://de-wikibrief-org.transla...

A unique feature of the ELF is that it did not require read-only memory (ROM) to boot. instead, the processor's Direct Memory Access (DMA) system was used to read front panel switches directly into memory.

The DMA controller also provides a special "load mode" that allows memory to be loaded while the processor's CLEAR and WAIT inputs are active. This allows a program to be loaded without the need for a ROM-based bootstrap loader. This was used by the COSMAC Elf microcomputer and its successors to load a program from toggle switches or a hexadecimal keyboard with no required software and minimal hardware. The user could simply set the switches to the next value, toggle the read, and then move on. It was not necessary to change the addresses, this was done automatically by DMA stepping.

(BTW the board I had was not a COSMA-ELF but it was very similar - it just had a hex keypad and a "latch" button plus two 7 segs. You would type a hex pair which would then be visible in the two 7-seg then when you pressed the latch button it would toggle the DMA to pass the latched value into the next byte of the 256 byte RAM. Another button was "run" and it would then execute what you had loaded.

But there was no ROM and the chip did not contain a "bootloader" as such (unless you consider the hardware gates that implemented the DMA part to be a hard wired bootloader in silicon?)

theusch

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#17

Posted by theusch: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 11:36 AM

clawson wrote:

...did not contain a "bootloader" as such (unless you consider the hardware gates that implemented the DMA part to be a hard wired bootloader in silicon?

Remember that (AFAIK) "bootloader" is a contraction of "bootstrap loader" where bootstrapping with front-panel switches for a value and then a "latch and increment address" switch/button/toggle was used on many computers of the era. Most? All? I know PDP/8 and CDC 8090 and I think CDC 6000 series and Burroughs medium/large system mainframes had it. (Burroughs "small systems" needed no special coldstart punching-in.)

grohote wrote:

Is faster better though?

The question is irrelevant.

It wasn't irrelevant to the young lady named Carolyn that I knew in college. Faster was definitely not better but really hard to convince a 19-year-old guy of that.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.

I've never met a pig I didn't like, as long as you have some salt and pepper.

Last Edited: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 11:39 AM

grohote

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#18

Posted by grohote: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 11:48 AM

theusch wrote:

It wasn't irrelevant

This thread is artificial, my citations are taken out of context, but the posting was correct so far, and, hope, it will remain.

WayneZA

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#19

Posted by WayneZA: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 04:19 PM

grohote wrote:

I do not know full details how they did it, in times before of PC...

A slide rule and a pen and paper?

Wayne

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WayneZA

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#20

Posted by WayneZA: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 04:20 PM

ki0bk wrote:

I'm retiring at the end of this week, more time to spend with family and some travel, I'll try to poke my head in, on occasion to see what's happening, I've enjoyed this forum very much, a great gang of Freaks it is!

May you have a wonderful time on retirement enjoying what you want to do with your family. It will be sad not to see you around here. Take care!

Wayne

East London
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No, I do not own a licensed copy of Proteus, I am evaluating it legitimately
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grohote

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#21

Posted by grohote: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 04:58 PM

WayneZA wrote:

a pen and paper

That I know. A paper, they glued to be like a scroll, and then ... mind, no compiler did it. Machine code in hexa only.

Edit: Ooooops, machine code for sure, but- was it in Octal, perhaps.

Last Edited: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 05:10 PM

mike32217

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#22

Posted by mike32217: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 05:06 PM

david.prentice wrote:

All the same. I am guilty of program first / think later.

Ditto, I like to just dive in, with an objective of course.

Happy Trails,

Mike

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digitalDan

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#23

Posted by digitalDan: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 11:16 PM

mike32217 wrote:

david.prentice wrote:

All the same. I am guilty of program first / think later.

Ditto, I like to just dive in, with an objective of course.

I do exactly the same but am not afraid to do a complete rewrite when it becomes apparent that I have made a wrong turn. It seems a lot of people are afraid to do this due to the misconception that a rewrite/refactor will take more time than continuing on with the mess they have created. For me, the discovery of making a "wrong turn" seems to bring the problem into sharp focus and with that clarity the rewrite usually happens at lightning speed.

Letting the smoke out since 1978

mike32217

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#24

Posted by mike32217: Tue. May 10, 2022 - 11:56 PM

digitalDan wrote:

I do exactly the same but am not afraid to do a complete rewrite when it becomes apparent that I have made a wrong turn. It seems a lot of people are afraid to do this due to the misconception that a rewrite/refactor will take more time than continuing on with the mess they have created. For me, the discovery of making a "wrong turn" seems to bring the problem into sharp focus and with that clarity the rewrite usually happens at lightning speed.

Some times it pays to cut your loses and do a refactor. Does it take longer to refactor or continue to try to get faulty code to work?

Happy Trails,

Mike

JaxCoder.com

valusoft

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#25

Posted by valusoft: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 01:09 AM

So spend time sharpening the axe before commencing the cutting.

Ross McKenzie, Melbourne Australia

barnacle

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#26

Posted by barnacle: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 05:45 AM

WayneZA wrote:

It will be sad not to see you around here

There's no reason to think that retirement forces one away from here... I've been retired a couple of years :)

Neil

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gregd99

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#27

Posted by gregd99: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 12:55 PM

A few war stories above.

there are good programmers and bad programmers. The good ones are good regardless of build speed, the bad ones…..

For me it all comes down to the time spent thinking, and one’s ability to visualise a complex problem in your minds eye. The best debugger in the world doesn’t help a great deal when you have memory corruption in a multi tasking system.

How many of us spend time staring at the wall as we construct the system (misbehaviour) in our mind? It is just so much easier to think earlier.

And some stories…

i booted RT11 off tape on a pdp 11/34 once. Why? Just to see how it worked. It did.. but seeking to the end of the tape for a file was fun

The first computer I used as an intern had 16 k of core, a genuine front panel, and a paper tape reader/punch. There was actually a screen based editor!!! Your source was overwritten by the assembler so best to save first!

Gosh I learned a lot that summer.

Then came 8085 builds on an Intel MDS that ran all night…

regards
Greg

Last Edited: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 12:57 PM

gchapman

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#28

Posted by gchapman: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 01:41 PM (Reply to #27)

gregd99 wrote:

Then came 8085 builds on an Intel MDS that ran all night…

Similar for RCA CDP18S008 though that project had relatively deep pockets so a minicomputer.

What is you chosen method of debugging code. | AVR Freaks

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Brian Fairchild

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#29

Posted by Brian Fairchild: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 01:49 PM

gregd99 wrote:

Then came 8085 builds on an Intel MDS that ran all night…

We solved that. We moved editing onto a small UNIX box with terminals on our desks and wrote scripts so we could remotely send our code off to the MDSs for compilation. After compiling the MDS would send the list files back to the terminals. Only when doing physical ICE did we actually use the MDS.

#1 Hardware Problem? https://www.avrfreaks.net/forum/...

#2 Hardware Problem? Read AVR042.

#3 All grounds are not created equal

#4 Have you proved your chip is running at xxMHz?

#5 "If you think you need floating point to solve the problem then you don't understand the problem. If you really do need floating point then you have a problem you do not understand."

Last Edited: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 01:50 PM

westfw

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#30

Posted by westfw: Wed. May 11, 2022 - 10:03 PM

For instance, I don't think I've ever (since school, anyway) been very careful about syntax when typing in code.

The first draft is likely to have misspellings and occasional punctuation errors. "#inclde <stdio.h/" and such.

The compiler will detect those errors more quickly than I could by proofreading before compilation.

The C compiler, anyway. It's interesting to reflect on the sorts of "easy-to-make" errors that would NOT be caught by "some other language" (like misspelling variable names in Python.)

digitalDan

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#31

Posted by digitalDan: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 03:28 AM

mike32217 wrote:

Some times it pays to cut your loses and do a refactor. Does it take longer to refactor or continue to try to get faulty code to work?

In my experience, doing a refactor is much quicker provided that I am keenly aware that I have made a wrong turn. For me, realizing I have made wrong turn brings what the correct/better turn is into sharp focus.

Letting the smoke out since 1978

gchapman

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#32

Posted by gchapman: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 03:35 AM (Reply to #30)

westfw wrote:

The compiler will detect those errors ...

Likewise IDE and interpreters.

westfw wrote:

(like misspelling variable names in Python.)

Pylint?

https://www.wholetomato.com/features/feature-coding-assistance#of

Pylint - code analysis for Python | www.pylint.org

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barnacle

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#33

Posted by barnacle: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 04:43 AM

westfw wrote:

(like misspelling variable names in Python.)

A language which allows return values of 1, 2, 3, and 'friday' from the same routine has, I feel, other issues than misspelt variable names. But people seem to like it!

Neil

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clawson

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#34

Posted by clawson: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 08:47 AM

barnacle wrote:

which allows return values of 1, 2, 3, and 'friday' from the same routine

You see that as a negative not a positive ? I love the fact you can do that in Python. When you think about C the only way to return 3 things from a function is to return a struct (or perhaps a pointer to struct) - that seems so limited after Python. Similarly you have so many different things you can return: tuples, lists, dictionaries, etc - wonderful stuff !

N.Winterbottom

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#35

Posted by N.Winterbottom: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 12:17 PM

I think Neil meant code like this:

def foo(x):
    if x == 0:
        return 0
    elif x == 1:
        return 1
    return "Friday"

as opposed to returning a tuple:

def bar():
    return (1,2,3,"Friday")

barnacle

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#36

Posted by barnacle: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 04:53 PM

Indeed Neil did. And no, he doesn't see it as a positive... handy on occasion yes, but a way to make robust code? Not convinced.

That said, my exposure to Python is limited; I think I've written only one major program in it. There's a lot to like in it, particularly for fast prototyping, but I'm not enamoured of it. And don't mention white-space...

Neil

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clawson

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#37

Posted by clawson: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 05:12 PM

My bad - I misunderstood the point you were making - I agree the ability to return conflicting types is a tad confusing.

If MISRA were involved they'd probably point out that well written functions should only have one point of exit anyway ;-) (which kind of constrains you to all returns being of a similar type!)

eugene the jeep

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#38

Posted by eugene the jeep: Thu. May 12, 2022 - 08:29 PM

Compare K&R C to the latest C++. Perhaps someday Python++ will be accepted by professional programmers, but no longer used by the people that currently use Python.

(I understand that the ANSI C, or whatever, is still used for the same things that K&R C were intended for, but I think Full Monty C++ is for someone else.)

But hey, there are not yet enough threads on the Internet where professional programmers rant about Python, so everyone go ahead and vent.

Brian Fairchild wrote:

It's at this point that we really do need the OP to come back and engage with us. So many questions..........

MarkThomas

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#39

Posted by MarkThomas: Fri. May 13, 2022 - 12:20 AM

I've found the best method for writing code is to do it carefully and correctly the first time.

barnacle

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#40

Posted by barnacle: Fri. May 13, 2022 - 04:55 AM

Heh, where's the fun in that?

An example of code currently under construction...

//  0xc9 - RET
    REG_PC_RW + DREG_RD + INC_NDEC,                        
    REG_PC_RW + DREG_WR + INC_NDEC + IR_WR + EXT_DATA_RD,   // have to increment to next address to make other instructions work!
    REG_SP_RW + DREG_RD + INC_NDEC,                         // sp to address
    REG_PC_RW + EXT_DATA_RD + WRITE_L,                      // return address low in pch
    REG_SP_RW + DREG_WR + INC_NDEC,  
    REG_SP_RW + DREG_RD + INC_NDEC,                         // increment sp
    REG_PC_RW + EXT_DATA_RD + WRITE_H,                      // return address high in pcl
    REG_SP_RW + DREG_WR + INC_NDEC + LAST,                  // increment sp again
    0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,	0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,	0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,

Admittedly, working at the level *below* machine code is probably not for everyone :)

Neil

Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk

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