Re: What has C++ become?

From:
Walter Bright <walter@digitalmars-nospamm.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:12:47 -0700
Message-ID:
<-9-dnYqp6b4FztPVnZ2dnUVZ_vudnZ2d@comcast.com>
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.

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