From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: atbowler@thinkage.on.ca (Alan Bowler) Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/08/20 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 175379171 sender: news@thinkage.on.ca references: <4urqam$r9u@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <01bb8b84$200baa80$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4vbbf6$g0a@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> organization: Thinkage Ltd. newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-08-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <4vbbf6$g0a@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >"Tim Behrendsen" writes: > >>Yes, but you can use the "get a better compiler" argument to >>justify anything. Real programs run on real computers using >>real compilers. The "Super-Duper Ivory Tower 9000 Compiler" >>just doesn't exist. > >This is a bogus argument, because the better compilers *I* was talking >about ACTUALLY EXIST. As a particular example, GCC does self-tail-call >optimisation and SPARCompiler C 4.0 does general tail-call optimisation. The compiler implemention may have chosen not to to implement this optimization. There are still systems where the there are limits on the resources that the compiler itself has available, and the so the total amount of code in the compiler has a practical limit. Also tail call optimizations may conflict with other useful extensions such as the old nargs() function. While you should not spend excessive time prematurely optimizing code, you also should not bloat your code with junk that depends on a fancy optimizer simply to get decent performance.