Re: is Vax addressing sane today

On 2024-09-09 23:44, MitchAlsup1 wrote:

On Mon, 9 Sep 2024 19:38:52 +0000, Brett wrote:

    [snip]

The future of programming languages is type safe with checks, you need
to get on that bandwagon early.

 This would/will happen faster when type-safe with checks are well
represented in benchmarks used to measure various architectural
things, and the exceptions and checks are actually utilized showing
performance degradation of lesser endowed architectures.

Not all the type-safe, checking languages are equal in that respect. In some languages, and I am thinking of Ada, the language design and the favored programming styles work to reduce the number of run-time checks required.
In the Ada case, the ability to declare array types with programmer-chosen index types with bounded range, such as range-bounded integers or enumerations, means that the compiler can avoid indexing checks when the (sub)type of the index is known at compile time to fit within the index range of the array.
It is also helpful that loop counters in Ada are also (sub)typed in the same way, which provides compile-time information on their range with respect to the index range of arrays accessed in the loop, even if the bounds of the range are not known at compile time.
As a result of these language features, the matching programming styles, and the attention paid to these issues by the compilers, the number of run-time checks executed by an Ada program and their effect on execution time are often surprisingly small.
So, to demonstrate the usefulness of HW support for checks, the benchmarks should use languages that require checks but do not have the features that let programmers reduce the number of checks by suitable programming styles. If Ada were used for the benchmarks, the programmers would have to use an abnormal, pessimal style that defeats the compiler's ability to elide checks.