[linux-audio-dev] [ot] [rant] gcc, you let me down one time too many

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Tim Goetze wrote:

> Frailty, thy name is GCC
> 
> A Modern Drama in Three Scenes.
> 
> Dramatis Personae: An ardent programmer and a popular C++ compiler
> 
> -*-
> 
> Prologue:
> 
> Appalled by the rat race commonly known as the proprietary software 
> business, our young and gifted hero joins the light side, deeply 
> inspired by the manifold yet subtle qualities of free software.
> 
> Scene I:
> 
> Our hero in day-and-night-long sessions optimizes the hell out of a 
> SSE2-based n*4-band IIR equalizer. Of course in assembly, and mixed 
> with C++ templating. The final code is about 10% faster than floats on 
> AMD, probably a fair bit quicker yet on P4 systems.
> 
> Enter gcc version 3, which drops multi-line inline assembly support. 
> Said assembly code becomes effectively unusable and dies a quick and 
> unsung death.
> 
> Scene II:
> 
> Our hero puts years of work into an all-round realtime audio and MIDI 
> library that expands the Python programming language. While having its 
> flaws, it's a versatile, surprisingly stable and immensely capable 
> system, partly thanks to a very clever (according to our hero) design 
> that subclasses Python's C types in C++.

Sound to me like that was relying on "undefined behaviour".

> Enter gcc version 3, moving the vtable member to memory offset 0 of a 
> derived type even if the base type is in C which doesn't know about 
> vtables.

Relying on undefined behaviour will, sooner or later, result in tears.

> Scene III:
> 
> Our hero bundles his DSP efforts into a free plugin library, once 
> again saving himself much work and improving code readability by using 
> C++ templates, resulting in quite an elegant object system and source 
> code, hethinks.
> 
> Enter gcc version 4, which requires the templated types' constructor 
> code be rewritten in the most nonsensical, misleading and ugly fashion 
> possibly imaginable this side of Hungary and Redmond, WA, according to 
> our (now not so very young anymore) hero.

Hmm, C++ bites again. I know little about C++, but maybe this last
change was due to some requirement of some C++ standard.

> Our hero has completely and permanently lost his faith in the popular 
> compiler.

Two out of the 3 above were C++ related and did not affect
the GNU C compiler.

> Disillusioned and indecisive, he resigns himself to 
> henceforth reluctantly write C++ only to support his miserable life. 

Can I sell you an Ocaml:

    http://www.ocaml.org/

Erik
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
  Erik de Castro Lopo  nospam at mega-nerd.com (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"... a discussion of C++'s strengths and flaws always sounds 
like an argument about whether one should face north or east 
when one is sacrificing one's goat to the rain god." 
-- Thant Tessman