Re: Speedy compilers

Jack W. Crenshaw wrote:
> Ever since their first introduction of Turbo Pascal 1.0, for CP/M
> machines, Borland has been noted for writing blindingly fast Pascal
> compilers. That first version was orders of magnitude faster than any
> other CP/M Pascal. The others were basically ports from minicomputer
> systems, and one could easily go for lunch while waiting for a
> compilation. Turbo compiled small programs before you could get your
> finger off the "C" key.


It's nice to see such an enthusiastic fan of Borland/Inprise! I use
Delphi a lot and like it very much (as a PC application development
environment) - particularly the reasonably strong typing and usable
object model.


But I'm inclined to agree with our moderator, speed comes from not
doing a lot of the hard work :) The only code optimizations I see it
doing regularly are; constant folding; strength reduction; and dead
code removal.


Now if they extended it to include common sub-expression and loop
invariant code recognition, I would expect to see much faster and
slightly smaller binaries. I for one would be very happy to see an
option for "optimize the life out of it - I don't care how long it
takes."


Andrew Fry.

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