3 ms·
The principle is "compiler optimizations should pay for themselves." This principle may seem deep because there is an element of self-reference in it, but it i
by ssp 14y ago
The principle is "compiler optimizations should pay for themselves."
This principle may seem deep because there is an element of self-reference in it, but it is really totally stupid. It's nothing but an arbitrary benchmark that will reject lots of useful optimizations. It's not "forgotten" wisdom from the golden ages; nobody ever abided by anything like it.
It's cool that the optimizing Oberon compiler did manage to make its own object code smaller than that of the non-optimizing compiler, but I'll eat my hat if they started out by stating this "principle", rather than just noticing after the fact that it had happened.
- batista 14y ago>It's not "forgotten" wisdom from the golden ages; nobody ever abided by anything like it. Unless you count Niclaus Wirth as a nobody, this isn't true. And in general what you wrote is not true --the gist is to be pragmatic about optimizations. >* but I'll eat my hat if they started out by stating this "principle", rather than just noticing after the fact that it had happened.* Well, eat your hat then, because Wirth was quite aggressive on following that route and he did state it from the beggining.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]