Re: What has C++ become?
Matthias Buelow wrote:
Walter Bright wrote:
My experiences with trying to accelerate C++ compilation led to many
design decisions in the D programming language. Each pass (lexing,
parsing, semantic analysis, etc.) is logically separate from the others,
Arguably, this is just a workaround for the basic problem that C++ (and
presumably D, aswell) is a language where the program must be completely
recompiled and linked before execution. Incremental development where
new code can be directly loaded and tested in a running object image is
imho a more productive model for large program development.
Back when vertebrates were just emerging from the slime, when I was
working on compilers for Symantec, the request came in for the linker to
acquire incremental linking ability because the competition's linker
could do incremental builds. When I pointed out that our linker could do
a full link faster than the incremental linkers could do an incremental
link, the point became moot.
Back to the present, I suggest that if the full build can be made fast
enough, there is no reason for incremental builds. I think Borland also
made that point well with their original Turbo Pascal release.