Of Bounties and Mercenaries

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Stelios Xanthakis wrote:
> Compiler speed *should not* be an issue. If gcc 3.5 is ten times
> slower compiling programs at -O2, that's a good thing: it means
> that it does more to procude better code. A program is compiled
> once but executed 100000 times. So compile-time is *not* an issue
> and it would be wrong if gcc developers dropped features because
> they slow compile speed.

You must be awefully good if you only compile your programs once! I'm 
just a poor sot who has to compile over and over again as I add new 
features and test and debug... ;)

Seriously, compile speed is a very serious problem for people working on 
large applications; it gets rather onerous when every cycle takes twn 
minutes to compile, ten seconds to test, and a minute to debug; I'm much 
more productive with a fast compiler.

> gcc developers *should* completely ignore comments about the speed
> of gcc. Do you get paid to improve the speed? No. Application
> programmers should write good code. If a big corp has incompetent
> people and expects from gcc to get faster at -O2, they can hire
> a filthy bounty hunter ;)

A rather arogant attitude, if I do say so myself. I guess we're not all 
as good as you are.

I might also add that I was not advocating the position of Linux 
developers, merely stating a well-known example of people who want 
something and who might be willing to pay for it.


-- 
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Software Invention for High-Performance Computing