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THE LAWS OF SOFTWARE PROCESS
line actually does, of course, may well be of several orders of magnitude
difference. The reason that statements in the higher-level language do
more than statements in the assembly language is that the higher-level lan-
guage primitives contain more knowledge than the assembly language.
Therefore, the program statement executes more knowledge. It does not
require more knowledge to push a button to switch on a robotic assembly
machine than it does to effectively use a hand axe. What the robotic assem-
bly machine does is much more complex than what the hand axe does but
the knowledge necessary to initiate it is not that much different.
We are moving into an era where the knowledge present in the tools is
enormous, the ...