Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Thomas Koenig Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: fledgling assembler programmer Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:26:50 -0000 (UTC) Organization: news.netcologne.de Sender: johnl@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <23-03-008@comp.compilers> References: <23-03-001@comp.compilers> <23-03-002@comp.compilers> <23-03-003@comp.compilers> <23-03-007@comp.compilers> Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="6104"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: C, assembler, history Posted-Date: 24 Mar 2023 10:09:56 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:3410 gah4 schrieb: [...] > Well, to be sure that this is about compilers, my favorite complaint > is the lost art of small memory compilers. That is, ones that can > run in kilobytes instead of megabytes. On the Internet, there is a project for almost everything - in this case Tiny C, which still seems to be under active development. Or at least there are sill commits at https://repo.or.cz/w/tinycc.git . However, there is a reason why compilers got so big - there is always a balance to be struck between comilation speed, compiler size and optimization. An extreme example: According to "Abstracting Away the Machine", the very first FORTRAN compiler was so slow that the size of programs it could compile was limited by the MTBF of the IBM 704 of around eight hours. The balance has shifted over time, because of increasing computing power and available memory that can be applied to compilation, and because relatively more people use programs than use compilers than ever before. So, in today's environment, there is little incentive for writing small compilers. Also, languages have become bigger, more expressive, more powerful, more bloated (take your pick), which also increases the size of compilers.