Comment by rollcat
1 day ago
That's a bit unfair to the modern compilers - there's a lot more standards to adhere to, more (micro)architectures, frontends need to plug into IRs into optimisers into codegen, etc. Some of it is self-inflicted: do you need yet-another 0.01% optimisation? At the cost of maintainability, or even correctness? (Hello, UB.) But most of it is just computers evolving.
But those are not rules. If you're doing stuff for fun, check out QBE <https://c9x.me/compile/> or Plan 9 C <https://plan9.io/sys/doc/comp.html> (which Go was derived from!)
Indeed, and thankfully there exist languages like D and Delphi to prove as being a modern compiler and fast compilation times are still possible 40 years later.
> That's a bit unfair to the modern compilers
It's really not. Proebsting's Law applies.
Given that, compilers/languages should be optimized for programmer productivity first and code speed second.