Consider what `stalin' does in about 3300 lines of Scheme
> code. It translates R4RS scheme to C and takes a lot of time
> doing so but the code is generates is blazingly fast. The
> kind of globally optimized C code you or I wouldn't have the
> patience to write. Or the ability to keep all that context in
> one's head to do as good a job. Stalin compiles itself to
> over 660K lines of C code! Then you give this C code to gcc
> and it munches away for many minutes and finally dies on a
> 2GB system! If gcc was capable of only doing peephole
> optimizing, it would've been able to generate code much more
> quickly and without need gigabytes of memory.
>

Ha! Just tried to compile Stalin on my 4G laptop... it quickly became a
laptop fryer... OUCH!

I might try 6c or 8c in a bit for comparison.

-joe