Re: optimizing compiler against average assembly programmer.

Charles Fiterman wrote:
>
> The human should always win and here is why.
>
> First the human writes the whole thing in a high level language.
>
> Second he profiles it to find the hot spots where it spends
> its time.
>
> Third he has the compiler produce assembly for those small
> sections of code.
>
> Fourth he hand tunes them looking for tiny improvements over
> the machine generated code.
>
> The human wins because he can use the machine.




A valid point in theory but not overly practical. The
difficulty is that code needs to be modified. With each modification
of the high level code it must be recompiled by the machine (easy) and
reoptimized by the programmer. a painful task upon which to embark
after making a minor change.


The claim that we only need to to do the optimization on the
final version of code rarely occurs in practice. In the situation in
which it occurs though you would be right.


Ralph Boland
--

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