Re: operation can be dispatching in only one type

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:11das66l3vhic$.1stkau3dqp6ld.dlg@40tude.net...
...
> 2. What makes you think that the compiler always knows better how to
> control raw memory?

Because it's true?? :-)

In an ideal world (with an ideal programming language), the compiler always 
knows far more than the programmer about the target, the access patterns, 
and so on. To the extent that there is information that the compiler doesn't 
have, the focus should be on giving it that information, not on telling it 
what to do. (For instance, it is better to tell a compiler which subprograms 
are "hot" than to tell it that it must inline certain subprograms --  
inlining is just one possibly way of improving the performance and the 
compiler is in a better position to juggle the trade-offs than any 
programmer could be. That's one of the reasons that just-in-time compilation 
produces better performance than one would imagine just based on 
traditionally compiling individual subprograms.)

In the real world, of course, there are limitations on compilation time, 
execution information, and so on, but it still is the case that it is rare 
that a programmer can really do better at these things (especially at the 
"raw memory" level) than a decent compiler. That's why it's unfortunate that 
most programming languages (and Ada is no exception) focus too much on 
features that can be implemented easily and less on improving abstraction. 
(But of course, get too fancy and the features can't be implemented 
efficiently at all, which defeats the purpose.)

                                    Randy.