Thank you very much, pjcast & daveangel! Now I understand why are the APIs so important nowadays, and why should I quit bothering about DOS-like hardware programming... So far I never had a problem with real low-level programming probably because I''m still working under W98SE But, with that new found knowledge, I''ll change my focus. Thanks again!

P.S. daveangel, I''ll check out that book immediately!


"Senri no michi mo ippo kara (A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step...)"

JL~

About the whole know your hardware thing:

Back when I started playing with graphics, mode X was the coolest thing. Converting the inner loops into asm was a must, etc (anybody else use a 32-bit int to hold both 16-bit fixed-point u/v coordinates simultaneously? He he he.). Then 3D accelerator cards came along, and no matter how fast my software renderer was, a sloppy HW implementation could beat mine. Now, with shaders and what not, we are getting "back" to the good old days.

As for the non-graphics part, I''ve always believed that knowing the HW was important. I remember being impressed because in Quake I some programmer (what was his name again?) set up the code so both integer and floating point pipelines were in use at the same time, with great results.

Of course, my highly optimized crap routines (bubble sort) tend to get beat by some poorly implemented better algo (any other sort [8^). So I try to keep my optimizing tendencies at bay till I''ve done a bit of profiling.

Well, there''s my 2%. Sorry if I sound like Pat Morrita ("ambition without knowledge is like a ship without sails". Or was it "jetski"?).


lonesock

Piranha are people too.