"Mostly thanks to the regularity of the RISC instruction set, the size of the compiler could be reduced significantly. It now measures less than 2900 lines of program and compiles itself in about 3 seconds, which is proof of its efficiency. The entire system compiles itself in less than 10 seconds."
Wirth had (has?) a famous heuristic where he would reject any optimization of the compiler that didn't make it faster to compile itself. Since optimizations add code and thus cost something to compile, this is a clever way of testing cost/benefit.
Comments
"Mostly thanks to the regularity of the RISC instruction set, the size of the compiler could be reduced significantly. It now measures less than 2900 lines of program and compiles itself in about 3 seconds, which is proof of its efficiency. The entire system compiles itself in less than 10 seconds."
Very nice indeed.
Wirth had (has?) a famous heuristic where he would reject any optimization of the compiler that didn't make it faster to compile itself. Since optimizations add code and thus cost something to compile, this is a clever way of testing cost/benefit.