Slashdot Mirror


Developing In C/C++? Why You Should Consider Clang Over GCC (dice.com)

Nerval's Lobster writes: The idea with Clang, a compiler front-end for C, C++, Objective-C++, and Objective-C, and LLVM (a compiler infrastructure) is that you can mix the compiler front-end with a targeted back-end and end up with highly portable and efficient compiler. Clang can perform static analysis of your code, and lets you write tools that give you information about a program. Although many developers prefer developing in C/C++ using GCC, developer David Bolton (in a new Dice article) makes an argument for why you should switch to Clang. While GCC is probably still best when it comes to speed, he argues, Clang is improving release by release, and features tools that developers could find useful.

2 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Translation by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Translation: "network tran--I mean speed is a feature that most of our users don't need, so it's not in our development plan"

    No. Clang produces faster code. What TFA means is that GCC compiles faster. But if slightly faster compiles are that important, just turn off the optimizer, or buy a faster computer. How much time does a modern developer spend waiting for the compiler to finish? For me, it is less than 1%. Far more important is the better error messages, warnings, and static analysis from Clang. Those save me way more time than the speed of the compiler.

  2. Re: Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And what kind of garbage programmers are you that need to compile the same code multiple times? Write the code correctly the first time and only compile once.