Most of gcc is still written in C. Only a tiny amount of new code is in C++. In my opinion, that's the worst of both worlds-- inconsistent code, plus C++ over

Most of gcc is still written in C. Only a tiny amount of new code is in C++. In my opinion, that's the worst of both worlds-- inconsistent code, plus C++ overheads. I work with some fairly recent version of both compilers-- gcc 4.7.2 and clang 3.2. I also know a developer on the LLVM team. clang is way ahead of gcc in many ways, and the gcc devs know it. We still ship software built with gcc, rather than clang, because gcc is still better at optimization. (gcc also supports more obscure targets, though that's not our biggest concern). We also make use of llvm's ability to dynamically recompile code on the fly in Cloudera Impala. More information here: http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2013/02/inside-cloudera-impala-runtime-code-generation/ http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2013/02/inside-cloudera-impala... This would not be possible with gcc no matter how much work we did (license issues-- Impala is Apache 2.0, gcc is GPLv3).