🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Nov 90 20:39:13 GMT, brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) said:

brnstnd> And the bugs keep coming, and coming, and coming, and coming
brnstnd> ...  I think we've successfully reduced this argument to a
brnstnd> simple question: ``Do optimizers gain more speed than they lose
brnstnd> reliability?'' Again, I'm firmly convinced that heavy
brnstnd> optimizations are on the latter side. It's pretty clear that
brnstnd> you are on the former side. In any case I think the argument is
brnstnd> finished.

Not so easily: the argument is also: are the alternatives at least in
way of principle as effective and safer?

Because if aggressive optimization were the only alternative, we would
only have choice between more speed and less reliability or less speed
and more reliability, and more speed can often mean a lot, and many
people do not care about reliability (e.g. the quoted bloat in vmunix,
GNU Emacs, etc...). But there are alternatives.
--
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