Comment by bluGill
21 hours ago
You are an idiot if you write an infinite loop. An infinite loop is a waste of CPU cycles and energy when run.
If it wasn't so hard to detect (the trivial cases are easy, but it gets hard quickly) I'd say the program should fail to compile.
And where to you think all that "wasted" energy/cycles would go otherwise? Why do you presume there's some other, more efficient way the CPU could be spending its time while waiting for an event to process?
I, the programmer, will decide what cycles are wasted or not. That the C++ committee thought they knew better is hubris.
If the CPU halts it isn't used at all. If the CPU does an infinite loop then it all goes to heat.
If the loop is doing anything then it cannot be optimized away. Only loops with no side effects meaning they are just turning the CPU into a heater count.
And how would you generate assembly to keep a microcontroller idle then?
You call the CPU halt instruction.
What if my CPU doesn't have that? I don't think Atmel Microcontrollers do for example.
6 replies →
Non-trivial infinite loops are very much not an "idiot" thing on embedded systems. "Run until power off" or "run until the warhead detonates" are perfectly normal things to do in that world.