What does "macro" mean anyway?

Giuseppe Bilotta giuseppe.bilotta at gmail.com
Wed Sep 12 04:01:42 PDT 2007


On Wednesday 12 September 2007 09:26, Janice Caron wrote:

> What does "macro" mean anyway?
> 
> I took the trouble to look it up in a dictionary. It means
> 
> 1 : being large, thick, or exceptionally prominent
> 2a : of, involving, or intended for use with relatively large quantities or
> on a large scale
> 2b : of or relating to macroeconomics
> 3 : GROSS
> 4 : of or relating to a macro lens or to close-up photography
> 
> Therefore, please may I suggest that we use the word "define" to define
> things - not "macro"

AFAIK the etymology of 'macro' in the computer world comes from (1) and (2a),
since it referred to the capabilities offered by some (assembler) compilers
to collect long streaks of microcode instructions into a single
'macroinstruction' without having to result to actual subroutines/interrupts/
etc


-- 
Giuseppe "Oblomov" Bilotta



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