Dave McGuire wrote:

>   So you're suggesting that the fact that some modern compilers are
> bloated and slow is "just ok" because SOME computers are fast enough
> to run them acceptably that it's not an issue?  Faster systems are an
> excuse for shoddy programming?

No, I'm saying that you cannot judge today's software by yesterday's
standards (in the case of VAX, of ~15 years ago.)  Not because they have
inherently become slow by "shoddy programming" but simply because
faster systems also allow for more sophisticated technologies being
incorporated in those softwares.  There are softwares of course where
that doesn't matter much, like for example text editors but you simply
cannot throw enough CPU at compilers when you want to do really
sophisticated code transformations (whether in gcc in particular this
accounts for all of its slowness is debatable but the comparison with
pcc2 probably shows that quite a lot of things are being done "under
the hood" in order to improve the resulting object code, apart from
the fact that you're compiling apples with oranges here since pcc
doesn't even accept the same language(s) as gcc does.)

--mkb