A very good point, however even if the human mind is deterministic if could still at least tie with the compiler
Also I am not at all saying it is practical to stop useing compilers and just hand code everything. I was just sick of sitting here and seeing a bunch of people making statements like compilers will ALWAYS beat a human and similar things. Allmost every post here at the time I posted was claiming that compilers Always won and I just wanted to clarify to everybody that this is true only becuase we have very little motivation in general to attempt to beat the compiler.
Hopefully the human mind is deterministic or I won't be able to download my brain into those computers in psycology today:)
This whole question boils down to whether or not a human mind is deterministic. We can prove that a compiler is, or in fact that any program that runs on current computer hardware is.
If a human mind is deterministic then it follows that a human could do just as good as a compiler simply by using all of the same algorithms to generate the code, although the computer would certainly finish alot sooner.
If a human mind is NOT deterministic then it is clear that a person who had no programming skill whatsoever could beat the best compiler given enough time, a specification sheet of the language he was to generate the given algorithims in and a circit diagram of the cpu he/she was coding for.
This is VERY simple to see. A compiler can NEVER under any conditions for any reason EVER EVER EVER produce better code than a human because the human can ALWAYS produce the same code that the compiler did. The question should be is it reasonable to wait the 150 years of time it would take me to compile mozzila by hand or should I build a compiler to do it in a few hours. The next question would be how much time(if any) should I spend hand optimizing the compiler output.
A question I have is why cant we do the same thing that a JIT compiler does before runtime? It seems clear that you could easily get very close to as much optimization from a multi pass profiling compiler as you ever could with a JIT without the runtime overhead.
This whole question boils down to whether or not a human mind is deterministic. We can prove that a compiler is, or in fact that any program that runs on current computer hardware is. If a human mind is deterministic then it follows that a human could do just as good as a compiler simply by using all of the same algorithms to generate the code although the computer would certainly finish alot sooner. If a human mind is NOT deterministic then it is clear that a person who had no programming skill whatsoever could beat the best compiler given enough time, a specification sheet of the language he was to generate the given algorithims in and a circit diagram of the cpu he/she was coding for. This is VERY simple to see. A compiler can NEVER under any conditions for any reason EVER EVER EVER produce better code than a human because the human can ALWAYS produce the same code that the compiler did. The question should be is it reasonable to wait the 150 years of time it would take me to compile mozzila by hand or should I build a compiler to do it in a few hours. The next question would be how much time(if any) should I spend hand optimizing the compiler output. A question I have is why cant we do the same thing that a JIT compiler does before runtime? It seems clear that you could easily get very close to as much optimization from a multi pass profiling compiler as you ever could with a JIT without the runtime overhead. Later Spacewalrus
Slashdot Mirror
A very good point, however even if the human mind is deterministic if could still at least tie with the compiler
:)
Also I am not at all saying it is practical to stop useing compilers and just hand code everything. I was just sick of sitting here and seeing a bunch of people making statements like compilers will ALWAYS beat a human and similar things. Allmost every post here at the time I posted was claiming that compilers Always won and I just wanted to clarify to everybody that this is true only becuase we have very little motivation in general to attempt to beat the compiler.
Hopefully the human mind is deterministic or I won't be able to download my brain into those computers in psycology today
SpaceWalrus
This whole question boils down to whether or not a human mind is deterministic. We can prove that a
compiler is, or in fact that any program that runs on current computer hardware is.
If a human mind is deterministic then it follows that a human could do just as good as a compiler simply by using all of the same algorithms to generate the code, although the computer would certainly finish alot sooner.
If a human mind is NOT deterministic then it is clear that a person who had no programming skill whatsoever could beat the best compiler given enough time, a specification sheet of the language he was to generate the given algorithims in and a circit diagram of the cpu he/she was coding for.
This is VERY simple to see. A compiler can NEVER
under any conditions for any reason EVER EVER EVER produce better code than a human because the
human can ALWAYS produce the same code that the compiler did. The question should be is it reasonable to wait the 150 years of time it would take me to compile mozzila by hand or should I build a compiler to do it in a few hours. The next question would be how much time(if any) should I spend hand optimizing the compiler output.
A question I have is why cant we do the same thing that a JIT compiler does before runtime? It seems
clear that you could easily get very close to as much optimization from a multi pass profiling compiler as you ever could with a JIT without the runtime overhead.
Later
Spacewalrus
read my post entitled
Hey everybody..Listen up
Later
Spacewalrus
This whole question boils down to whether or not a human mind is deterministic. We can prove that a compiler is, or in fact that any program that runs on current computer hardware is. If a human mind is deterministic then it follows that a human could do just as good as a compiler simply by using all of the same algorithms to generate the code although the computer would certainly finish alot sooner. If a human mind is NOT deterministic then it is clear that a person who had no programming skill whatsoever could beat the best compiler given enough time, a specification sheet of the language he was to generate the given algorithims in and a circit diagram of the cpu he/she was coding for. This is VERY simple to see. A compiler can NEVER under any conditions for any reason EVER EVER EVER produce better code than a human because the human can ALWAYS produce the same code that the compiler did. The question should be is it reasonable to wait the 150 years of time it would take me to compile mozzila by hand or should I build a compiler to do it in a few hours. The next question would be how much time(if any) should I spend hand optimizing the compiler output. A question I have is why cant we do the same thing that a JIT compiler does before runtime? It seems clear that you could easily get very close to as much optimization from a multi pass profiling compiler as you ever could with a JIT without the runtime overhead. Later Spacewalrus