🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Nov 90 20:12:12 GMT, smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan) said:

smryan> If it's optional and you don't want, don't use. If you can buy a
smryan> compiler without an optimiser (which is easy), do so. If nobody
smryan> wants an optimiser, nobody buys them. If somebody wants one, why
smryan> not let them buy it?

Oh, this is sociology -- the issue is not whether there is a *market*
for optimizers or not -- it is whether the market should exist, and
which needs it should satisfy.

People who buy optimizers do so not on the basis of adverts associating
them with scantily clad gorgeous females or (even more alluring to some
people :->) 64 bit superscalar CPUs.  They (should) do so on the basis
of a cost effectiveness argument, and we have been debating this.

The argument is actually twofold: as a user, should I buy an optimizer?
as a developer, should I invest in building an optimizer?

The second problem is also very important -- the computer industry is
largely driven by the supply, not the demand side, quantitatively and
qualitatively. Users look to implementors for a sense of direction. The
decisions of implementors will be often followed without questioning,
because users do not have the experience or insight and more or less
know it.

IMNHO the main reason for which the computer industry is driven by the
supply side is that talent is very scarce, and for this reason not all
possible alternatives worth exploring can be explored.

The problem, bfore considering market demand, can also be expressed
thus: should David Chase and Jim Giles and Preston Briggs and Hank Dietz
(just to mention some frequent contributors to this sort of discussion)
spend their time devising ever more ingenious and complicated and hairy
code generator level hacks, or would their research and development
efforts be better spent on clever compilation of higher level languages
and source level programmer's assistants? Are there enough compiler
experts to explore both possibilities? If not, which possibility looks
the best winner? Is aggressive optimization of low level languages a
technological blind alley like autocoders? Inquiring minds want to
know...

Not simple questions, and I am presenting here an unfashionable but
hopefully amusing set of answers to them, which should not be ignored.
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk