> What's to say that a computer program can't code assembly better than > any human possibly could? There are a ton of tasks that computers do > thousands of times better than humans. I think it makes perfect sense > that code written in C can execute faster than human-written assembly > code.
No compiler will ever do *all* of the optimizations that are possible, because most optimizations are NP-complete or even much worse. For example the equivalance of boolean expressions is NP-complete. Some potential optimizations (such as replacement of data structures) may not even computable. This is why humans must choose the algorithms and data strucures. Compilers are very good at *small, local optimizations*, such as putting variables in registers, common sub-expression elimination, and choosing the fastest instructions. Compilers almost always outperform humans on these tasks because compilers consistently try every trick they know, and they don't get tired. Even way back in the 1970s, studies showed that optimizers consistently outperformed humans on these tasks, and back then, many people still practiced doing assembler regularly. Today, performance combines programmer and compiler intelligence. Neither can replace the other. Please use both. Michael Wing _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
