Re: else ladders practice

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.