Comparing C/C++ unity build with regular build on a large codebase (2024)

Re:Comparing C/C++ unity build with regular build on a large... by saharazara on Thursday April 02, 2026 @05:16AM (#47611938)

3 minutes to process 500k lines of text, it really is pathetic how slow C++ is to compile.

Any new modern language that can't compile 1 million lines in a couple seconds (without optimizations) should be considered a failure.

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Re:Comparing C/C++ unity build with regular build on a large... by PaulHoule on Monday April 06, 2026 @11:58AM (#47662616)

(1) The demand for fast compilation in languages like Go came from the terrible experience people had with C++

(2) The road to C++ was quite empirical, path-dependent, and "worse is better". Languages like PL/I, Ada, and the Modula series were aiming for the same niche but had a combination of bad ideas, excessive complication and being born just before we realized that every future OS outside the embedded space would look enough like POSIX that C's API for I/O would be portable

(3) Today I'm a little frustrated that we don't have languages that trade a slower build for more expressiveness or flexibility. Like I wish Python really exposed that PEG grammar. It doesn't have to be much harder to add an

  unless(X):

statement that works like

  if(!X):

in a language like Python than like LISP, it's like a few lines to add a production for the statement, another to rewrite the statement inside the compiler and it's done.

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