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GCC Turns 25

Posted by timothy on from the old-enough-to-ethically-date dept.

eldavojohn writes "With the release of GCC 4.7.0, the venerable and stalwart constant that is the GNU Compiler Collection turns twenty five. More ISO standards and architectures supported with this release and surely more memories to come from the compiler that seems to have always been."

6 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Re:lolcompilers by multiben · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You must be a high quality programmer.

  2. Thanks gcc! by stox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You youngin' have no idea of what kind of crap for compilers we had to put up with until gcc.

    25 years of compilation with gcc!

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
    1. Re:Thanks gcc! by msclrhd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Having competing products (browsers, compilers, operating systems, ...) help keep those products from stagnating and help push all involved products to improving. It also helps prevent people being reliant on specific compiler/browser/office suite behaviour. GCC is not a "crap compiler", just like Firefox is not a "crap browser". That is not saying that GCC is issue free, nor that it has improved in part as a result from LLVM/Clang. Likewise, LLVM/Clang is not the panacea of compilers.

      Competition on a level playing field is a good thing.

    2. Re:Thanks gcc! by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How exactly GPLv3 on the _compiler_ stops you from doing anything? It has only one effect: ensures the toolchain stays usable for everyone.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  3. Re:And showing every bit of its age too, apparentl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Intel and Microsoft compilers are generally considered better than GCC for IA32 and x86_64, but that's mostly because those are the only platforms those compilers need to target (Microsoft care about ARM now, but I don't know how well MSVCC compares to GCC for any given ARM target). Architecture specific compilers will always be able to take crazy shortcuts in the optimiser and generator. GCC has to jump through all sorts of hoops between the front end and the back end, because the front end can't make any assumptions about the back end.

  4. Thank you gnu by Ada_Rules · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I remember the first time I built gcc in college on an decstation (probably around 1990) I was thrilled to have a free compiler with source code. It almost seemed like magic. Several years later when the GNAT project started and promised to bring Ada programming to GCC I was even happier but I never really expected it would turn into the high quality Ada compiler that we have today. While HURD never really worked out, the GCC project alone (never mind the vast quantity of other software covered by the GPL) has been transformational and I think many of the younger generation take the existence of this stuff for granted.

    Now, get off my lawn.

    --
    --- Liberty in our Lifetime