> The current attitude popular amongst compiler writers is that of strict legality; the term "language-lawyering" certainly applies. The difference is that mor

> The current attitude popular amongst compiler writers is that of strict legality; the term "language-lawyering" certainly applies. The difference is that morality is inherently subjective whereas a programming language is pretty much the exact opposite - it is /exactly/ defined by its specification. You may disagree with the design of the language (which is subjective), but that is strictly different from "language-lawyering" and determining what is and isn't allowed by the specification as it is objectively written. > Yet for some reason, when C and UB comes up, for some reason it seems not agreeing with those ruthlessly exploiting the standard and belittling everyone who dares question them is a highly unpopular and controversial opinion? Barring the rather unreasonable characterisation of compiler writers as "exploiting" and "belittling" developers, if people have a problem with compiler writers optimizing to the extents allowed by the programming language, then the place to voice these concerns is not through opposition to the compiler writers (who are just doing their job), but to the standards committee writing the specification for the language.