Hello World! on modern processors.

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed Aug 22 10:27:21 2001

> On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Jay West wrote:
> > Yes, but per my earlier example.... are we shooting for less instructions in
> > the program or less intructions executed in total for the program? (ie, your
> > 23 byte example is calling dos system services, so.... lots of additional
> > instructions there).
>
> So far, nobody has set the rules for the game.
> And if it is NOT to use OS API stuff, should we also outlaw using the OS
> to start and end the program or even to load it?
> How about routines in ROM? (PC BIOS INT 10h function 0Eh will display a
> character)

Not being able to use OS services makes it quite a bit harder, especially
given that the physical address of display memory isn't a constant on machines
of the same architecture. Moving a string to display memory is easy if
you know the destination address. In other words, a program that would do
the job on the Ultra 10 on my desk is 32 bytes or so. A program that will
do the job on the Ultra 10 on my desk and on the Sparcstation 2 on the next
desk is a few K. It gets a whole lot easier if you can use the ROM or the OS.

Eric
Received on Wed Aug 22 2001 - 10:27:21 BST