demon@desire.wright.edu (11/02/90)
In article <27465:Oct3104:02:3590@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>, brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes: > In article <1990Oct31.014132.2400@agate.berkeley.edu> bks@alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman) writes: >> I have included a program below which is broken by the Microsoft 6.0 >> compiler on MSDOS. While this is no great surprise, the circumstances >> that break the code have caused some concern in our shop. > [ ``register'' breaks the compiler ] > > On behalf of the comp.lang.misc crew, I regret to inform you that we > must disregard your article on the grounds that the situation you > describe is completely impossible. I am pleased to reject your article on behalf of the entire planet earth. The statements you make are completely ludicrous. > > Compilers no longer have bugs. Optimizers, in particular, are fully ^hey! where's the smiley? Surely you jest! I recently reported a _Compiler bug_ to DEC. Their compiler choked when encountering more that two ill defined enum's. > capable of transforming programs by techniques as reliable as those > described by Dijkstra in his classic book on software design. > > Microsoft is a large, respected company that hires the latest crop of I agree with large...the rest however... :) > yuckies directly from the top computer science departments in the > country. It uses software engineering methods that have been proven > correct by their automated program correctness verifier. If you are > seeing unreliable results in your program, either the hardware has a > fault or quantum effects are taking hold. Your computer may soon undergo > spontaneous internal combustion. > > ``Software engineering'' was coined on January 17, 1985, the same day > that the last optimizer bug was reported. For more than half a decade, > optimizers have been absolutely perfect. They are always worth the time > they take, because they produce incredible speedups with no risk of > program failure. It seems safe to say that hand optimization died the > day that software engineering was invented. > > Have a nice day. > > ---Dan This must have been a Halloween posting...that's the only answer! Brett