From Switch Statement Down to Machine Code (2013)

Re:From Switch Statement Down to Machine Code (2013) by salmonellaeater on Thursday November 27, 2014 @08:49AM (#8667249)

C programming language is very high-level...

This made me chuckle. The author has a very different perspective from most software developers I know.

...and it might seem that in many cases it should not matter how the control flow is described and the same optimization might be applied as long as a resulting program is functionally the same. This raises a question of whether compiler will do the same optimizations if programmer is using if-then-else. In theory, it might be the same, or might be different. But instead of guessing, let’s find out.

I love the author's attitude towards experimentation. It reminds me of John Carmack: "If you aren't sure which way to do something, do it both ways and see which works better."

Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1445/

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Re:From Switch Statement Down to Machine Code (2013) by muyuu on Thursday November 27, 2014 @10:38AM (#8667613)

Back in the 90s, C was indeed considered high level. Most people had a background of assembly+something else (like Pascal or even Basic). The typical C+libs approach was rather high level in comparison.

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