Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ncar!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: volatile: a summary
Message-ID: <11896@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jun 88 05:12:50 GMT
References: <11837@mimsy.UUCP> <3811@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> <11848@mimsy.UUCP> <691@creare.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 24

>In article <11848@mimsy.UUCP> I included the line
>>A perfect compiler would know as much as all its programmers combined ...

but I also included something very important that was subsequently deleted:

	OF COURSE, NO PERFECT COMPILERS EXIST, NOR ARE ANY LIKELY
	TO BE WRITTEN IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.

In article <691@creare.UUCP> inb@creare.UUCP (Ian Brown) writes:
>In other words, with a perfect compiler, who needs programmers? :-)

Actually, if you augment it with a perfect language, yes.  (There may
be an inherent conflict between unambiguous languages and natural
languages, which might make perfect languages impossible.)

Again from my original article:

But good compilers do exist, and better ones are conceivable; a very good
compiler could use external information to find most (but not all)
variables that are certain *not* to have the attribute, and could then
assume that all others do, and this would suffice.

-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris