Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Why VAX Was the Ultimate CISC and Not RISC
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2025 04:09:13 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 11
Message-ID: <vqdrh9$3cdrc$1@dont-email.me>
References: <vpufbv$4qc5$1@dont-email.me>
	<2025Mar1.125817@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <vpvrn5$2hq0$1@gal.iecc.com>
	<2025Mar1.232526@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <vq2dfr$2skk$1@gal.iecc.com>
	<2025Mar2.234011@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <5pkg9l-kipt.ln1@msc27.me.uk>
	<2025Mar3.174417@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <vq4qav$1dksd$1@dont-email.me>
	<vq5dm2$1h3mg$5@dont-email.me> <2025Mar4.110420@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
	<vq829a$232tl$6@dont-email.me> <2025Mar5.083636@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
	<vqdljd$29f8f$2@paganini.bofh.team>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Injection-Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2025 05:09:14 +0100 (CET)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="402ec525a2ea4c54ba55895e60146536";
	logging-data="3553132"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+3L07nzezwxjI7XH0uYWFB"
User-Agent: Pan/0.162 (Pokrosvk)
Cancel-Lock: sha1:EVEBIJSNJEnJUbsff5AHn7sXasI=
Bytes: 1875

On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 02:27:59 -0000 (UTC), Waldek Hebisch wrote:

> VAX intstructions are very complex and much of that complexity is hard
> to use in compilers.

A lot of them mapped directly to common high-level operations. E.g. MOVC3/
MOVC5 for string copying, and of course POLYx for direct evaluation of 
polynomial functions.

In a way, one could say that, in many ways, VAX machine language was a 
higher-level language than Fortran.