Re: Warnings in the C++ Front-End and GCC in General

[mrs at wrs dot com (Mike Stump)]

I am reminded of a saying that says, basically, the best designed
things need no adjustment nobs.  Think about old TV sets that needed a
vsync nob, an hsync nob, the AFC nob, the rbias, gbias and bbias nobs
and the list could go on.  Some of them were because the spec of a
part changed with age and the nob was there to compensate for the
various parts over their lifetimes.  Nowadays, they are mainly there
for user preferences and quite a few of them don't exist anymore,
though the functionality is still inside the TV set.

When designed well, the compilers shouldn't need too many nobs.  I
tend to think there are more nobs than necessary today, though we are
always reluctant to remove some of the lesser needed ones.

Are these nobs really worthwhile?  I see this request about every year
or two, while there seems to be some demand, I don't think it is
critical.  I was all for this type of code going into the compiler,
but now I guess I am undecided/ambivalent.