Re: is Vax addressing sane today

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 17:20:56 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 28/09/2024 01:52, George Neuner wrote:

On Wed, 25 Sep 2024 12:54:18 -0400, EricP
<ThatWouldBeTelling@thevillage.com> wrote:
 

For me error detection of all kinds is useful. It just happens
to not be conveniently supported in C so no one tries it in C.
>
GCC's -trapv option is not useful for a variety of reasons.
1) its slow, about 50% performance hit

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2) its always on for a compilation unit which is not what programmers need
    as it triggers for many false positives so people turn it off.

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Changing these options does have some limitations, such as disabling
inlining into functions with different options.  But you can happily
apply it to only some functions in a translation unit.
>

 
Things like that are why some companies have a code policy that allows
just one function per file.
 

>
I have never heard of such a policy, and I think it would be an
extremely silly one - code would be completely unmanageable, and the
results would be significantly poorer when using modern compilers (i.e.,
anything this century).

It is often the case when software modeling tools are in use because
the tools tend to produce one source file per model 'object' or
relation.  And it DOES tend to result in poor(er) code. 

Most modeling tools do have the option to place code in specified
files - so generally it is possible to have better control over the
compilation and linking of the executables ... but typically it isn't
done: often because the company has a policy to not interfere with the
tool.

Some people - managers mostly - feel that if it runs, and the code
quality is 'acceptible' (for some definition), then  "better is the
enemy of 'good enough'".


I have seen it firsthand. 

But for the record: I refuse to use modeling tools for code or for
project management.  However, I do a fair amount of DBMS work these
days, and I have found some DBMS modeling tools to be useful for
creating schema /documentation/.

Still a problem if you need <whatever the relevant flag does> only in
one or a few places.

>
There are gcc flags that are only controllable for compiler invocations,
rather than with pragmas or attributes, and of course not every compiler
has the flexibility of gcc or clang.  But this is not nearly the level
you seem to think it is.