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From: Bart <bc@freeuk.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: else ladders practice
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:21:35 +0000
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On 20/11/2024 13:42, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Bart <bc@freeuk.com> writes:
>> On 19/11/2024 23:41, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
>>> Bart <bc@freeuk.com> wrote:
>>
> 
>>
>> It's funny how nobody seems to care about the speed of compilers (which
>> can vary by 100:1), but for the generated programs, the 2:1 speedup you
>> might get by optimising it is vital!
> 
> I don't consider it funny at all, rather it is simply the way things
> should be.   One compiles once.

Hmm, someone else who develops software, either without needing to 
compile code in order to test it, or they write a 1M-line app and it 
compiles and runs perfectly first time!

Sounds like some more gaslighting going on: people develop huge 
applications, using slow, cumbersome compilers where max optimisations 
are permanently enabled, and yet they have instant edit-compile-run 
cycles or they apparently don't need to bother with a compiler at all!

>  One's customer runs the resulting
> executable perhaps millions of times.

Sure. That's when you run a production build. I can even do that myself 
on some programs (the ones where my C transpiler still works) and pass 
it through gcc-O3. Then it might run 30% faster.

However, each of the 1000s of compilations before that point are pretty 
much instant.

>>
>> Here I might borrow one of your arguments and suggest such a speed-up is
>> only necessary on a rare production build.
> 
> And again, you've clearly never worked with any significantly
> large project.  Like for instance an operating system.

No. And? That's like telling somebody who likes to devise their own 
bicycles that they've never worked on a really large conveyance, like a 
jumbo jet. Unfortunately a bike as big, heavy, expensive and cumbersome 
as an airliner is not really practical.

Besides, in the 1980s the tools and apps I did write were probably 
larger than the OS. All I can remember is that the OS provided a file 
system and a text display to allow you to launch the application you 
really wanted.

The funny is that it is with large projects that edit-compile-run 
turnaround times become more significant. I've heard horror-stories of 
such builds taking minutes or even hours. But everybody here seems to 
have found some magic workaround where compilation times even on -O3 
don't matter at all.


>>> machine, I think that available memory (64MB all, about 20MB available
>>> to user programs) is too small to run gcc or clang.
>>
>>
>> Only 20,000KB? My first compilers worked on 64KB systems, not all of
>> which was available either.
> 
> My first compilers worked on 4KW PDP-8.   Not that I have any
> interest in _ever_ working in such a constrained environment
> ever again.

There could be some lessons to be learned however. Since the amount of 
bloat now around is becoming ridiculous.

>>
>> None of my recent products will do so now, but they will still fit on a
>> floppy disk.
> 
> And, nobody cares.

You obviously don't.