>I think this was silly, the author clearly does know C but they are complaining about optimizing compilers which do things "behind your back" and are becoming

>I think this was silly, the author clearly does know C but they are complaining about optimizing compilers which do things "behind your back" and are becoming an increasing nuisance I think the compiler behaviour is meant to be illustrative of the main point, not the main point itself, which I think is simply that the actual C language is more complicated than people appreciate. Most of the examples have nothing to do with optimization whatsoever; they're purely focused on correctness.