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Sorry for the stupid question, but what is the benefit of building a C compiler nowadays, and what is interesting about this particular one?
by celest1 5y ago
Sorry for the stupid question, but what is the benefit of building a C compiler nowadays, and what is interesting about this particular one?
- andrewchambers 5y agoThe benefit is mainly that it is interesting and easy to learn/experiment because it has a very small and tidy implementation.. Just an example, building cproc from source takes a few seconds - building gcc from source takes like 15 minutes at least.
- jjice 5y ago> very small and tidy implementation Especially impressive for implementing the C11 spec and some GNU extensions.
- veltas 5y agoYour C compiler is probably a very large C++ program written over many years and with millions of dollars worth of time poured into it. The C compiler I use takes up hundreds of megabytes of space in a minimal build. So in my opinion it's interesting if someone can write something original with 80% of the useful functionality on their own, or achieve it in a different way. And their code might be more approachable/educational to people than the behemoth.