Re: Best, Simple versus Best

>Powell's approach to the optimizer was what he called "best simple": Do the
>best job you can while keeping the optimizer itself simple and easy to under-
>stand (and thus get right). He rejects many of the published algorithms as
>too complex, too hard to understand, and too unlikely to be useful in most
>programs.


preston@tera.com (Preston Briggs) writes:
> The entire discussion to this point reminds me of an essay by Richard
> Gabriel (I'm sorry I don't have even a minimal reference)


For those interested: It's available by anonymous ftp:


        @misc{lang:lisp:gabriel:92.1,
          author = {Richard P. Gabriel},
          title = {Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big},
          year = {ca.~1992}
          howpublished = {URL
        \path|ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu:/user/ai/lang/lisp/txt/gabriel/gabriel.tgz|},
          library = {own},
          annote = {
          \js{} Contrasts Lisp \& C development. The former is done with the
        {\sl MIT/Stanford approach of design\/} (aka ``doing the right
        thing''). It leads to good, but large and internally complex programs
        that are often monolithic and hard to port. The latter is done in the
        {\sl New Jersey approach of design}, where security and interface
        simplicity are often traded to performance wins. In addition, that
        paper is a nice overview about problems in Lisp programming. In
        particular, the wish that one should be able to write small
        applications in Lisp just like one does in C is still waiting for its
        fulfillment.
          }
        }


European folks might want to get it from
ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de/pub/programming/languages/lisp/Documentation/gabriel.tar.gz.
The archive has LaTeX, DVI, and PostScript versions of the document.


Joachim


--
Joachim Schrod Email: schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
Computer Science Department
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany


--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.