From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 9.1 \(3096.5\)) From: Brantley Coile In-reply-to: Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 18:33:08 -0500 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-id: <4BA8023A-95EF-4B39-85E2-444DD2766C61@me.com> References: <0962EE36-1765-440C-816F-90DEF0A5720D@me.com> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Subject: Re: [9fans] Compiling ken-cc on Linux Topicbox-Message-UUID: 795c6c9a-ead9-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Not dogmatic. Just 38 years and I still believe small is beautify.=20 One interesting thing is that for the past twenty years new = architectures have been designed to run C code well. Just check out the = papers a ISCA. Then why do we have to have such complicated compilers to = generate code for it. > On Nov 28, 2015, at 3:31 PM, Anthony Sorace wrote: >=20 > Brantley wrote: >=20 >> One could argue that the Plan 9 C compiler lacks the modern = optimizations that the other compilers have. This would be true. But I = would argue that almost all of those optimizations are either not = needed... >=20 > Note the "almost all" in there. It's important not to get dogmatic = about such things. The argument isn't that kencc is at precisely the = perfect point on the simplicity-vs-optimization spectrum, but that it's = pretty darn close, closer that known alternatives, and errs on the safer = side. Likely there are optimizations or features in newer chipsets that = would be worth supporting, but even so: we've got a long way to go = before hitting gcc/clang levels.