Re: Compiler Companies in Australia

Ray Dillinger wrote:


> ; as a result free compilers were implemented
> early, and have continued to undergo improvement constantly, and it's
> extremely difficult nowadays for a commercial product to compete with
> something like gcc on the basis of code quality.


I disagree. The long term strength of GCC is also it greatest weakness
its roots have prevented it from reaching out in the technical sense
despite it broad base of supported processors. While GCC users
still talk about the advantage of using it despite the expected 20 to
30% hit is code size against well written assembly code,
commercial compiler vendors routinely produce compilers that
produce code as tight or tighter than very good disciplined
assembly programers.


There is certainly a place for GCC but in large development projects
requiring language actually conforming to a standard and supported
software tools GCC is barely one of the players.


In the coming years of multiprocessor, thread machines and diverse
processor architectures not to mention many new data types supported
by HLL's GCC is locked into its historical roots way behind the
current commercial compilers that have no similar restrictions. The
multi-million dollar effort to make GCC competitive even when
distributed across its large base will be difficult.




> We've reached a point in history, I think, where it is no longer
> possible for a programming language to become popular unless there
> is a free (both in expense and in availability of source code)
> compiler for it, and companies therefore need other motives besides
> the ability to charge money for the compiler to justify developing
> them.


I probably would have agreed with this statement a year or so ago,
I don't now. The compiler companies are finally starting to again
put development effort into what their customers are willing to pay for
and support those customers.


w..

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