Bill Baxter wrote:
On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 5:54 AM, Walter Bright
<newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote:
Sean Kelly wrote:
I keep thinking I should put on a "Compiler Construction" seminar!
You should. The academic courses do a good job with theory and
general application, but that isn't quite the same as one based on
practical experience.
That's true. I learned the theory taking a compiler construction course at
Standford, and then tried to apply it. It turns out that there's a lot they
left out <g> that's needed to actually get those optimizations to work.
Loop induction variables was a big one, because the theory never takes into
account the fact that you're replacing a signed loop index with an unsigned
loop pointer. Oops!
It's like in physics class you're always dealing with frictionless brakes
and pointless masses.
You mean massless points? Or was that deliberate?
I think there were two jokes actually: frictionless brakes (used instead
of e.g. frictionless pulleys) which is an oxymoron, and a pun on point
masses (objects that can be approximated by a point).
Andrei
