Agreed on both counts: someone had to write those library functions, and this was just an example.
However, the author starts by talking about a "holy war between C and Fortran" and then proceeds to write... well, assembly language using the C compiler. So the summary could be "assembly language can be made more efficient than Fortran, and C lets you coax the compiler into writing the assembly language you want". I guess this could be seen as a win for C, but I'm not so sure...
However, the author starts by talking about a "holy war between C and Fortran" and then proceeds to write... well, assembly language using the C compiler. So the summary could be "assembly language can be made more efficient than Fortran, and C lets you coax the compiler into writing the assembly language you want". I guess this could be seen as a win for C, but I'm not so sure...