Re: language design and Optimization techniques

From	Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: language design and Optimization techniques
Date	2019-04-27 11:56 +0100
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<19-04-031@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<72d208c9-169f-155c-5e73-9ca74f78e390@gkc.org.uk> <19-04-020@comp.compilers> <19-04-025@comp.compilers>

Show all headers | View raw

On 26/04/19 09:33, alexfrunews@gmail.com wrote:
> In this day and age it is a shame that the language that is still very
> much alive does not provide the programmer with easy-to-use (and
> implement!) tools to perform/handle:
 > ...
 > Often times the desired functionality is already in the CPU

I agree 100%. My guess is that manufacturers of CPUs which
did *not* have a certain feature lobbied to have the feature
removed from the language. The resulting compromise
is a minimal intersection of features with 199 cases
of undefined behaviour when agreement cannot be made.

For a language which is supposed to give access to the "bare metal",
C provides very little.

We should be designing languages for people to use and then designing
CPUs which can efficiently compile and execute these languages.

I have quoted this before, but it bears repeating:

"We shall do a much better programming job, provided that we approach
the task with a full appreciation of its tremendous difficulty,
provided that we stick to modest and elegant programming languages,
provided that we respect the intrinsic limitations of the human mind
and approach the task as Very Humble Programmers."
-- E.W.Dijkstra, ACM Turing Lecture 1972, "The Humble Programmer"

> P.S. this should've probably gone to some C group.

I think that C is beyond hope and therefore this is definitely
the most appropriate group!

--
			Martin

Dr Martin Ward | Email: martin@gkc.org.uk | http://www.gkc.org.uk
G.K.Chesterton site: http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc | Erdos number: 4
[C is close to the bare metal if the metal is a PDP-11 or maybe a GE 635.
Other than that, it's an abstract machine of, as we have seen, highly
debatable similarity to the underlying hardware. -John]

Back to comp.compilers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: Optimization techniques Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2019-04-25 16:46 +0100
  Re: Optimization techniques Kaz Kylheku <847-115-0292@kylheku.com> - 2019-04-25 23:01 +0000
  Re: Optimization techniques alexfrunews@gmail.com - 2019-04-26 01:33 -0700
    Re: language design and Optimization techniques Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2019-04-27 11:56 +0100
    Re: Optimization techniques 0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com - 2019-04-27 04:56 -0700
      Re: C language andOptimization techniques alexfrunews@gmail.com - 2019-04-27 19:47 -0700
    Re: reliability features and Optimization techniques Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2019-04-28 11:58 +0100
      Re: reliability features and Optimization techniques Jan Ziak <0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com> - 2019-04-29 04:33 -0700
    Re: Optimization techniques Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2019-04-30 18:11 -0700
    Re: Optimization techniques David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2019-05-07 16:43 +0200
  Re: Optimization techniques Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com> - 2019-04-27 23:01 +0200
    Re: Optimization techniques, C++ numeric representations David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2019-04-29 17:24 +0200
      Re: Optimization techniques, C++ numeric representations Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com> - 2019-04-30 15:01 +0200

csiph-web