? (0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com) on 6/28/10 wrote:

>... unless someone presents a serious argument why C/C++ compilers cannot be improved
>I am going to claim that it is possible to develop a C/C++ compiler that is 100x
>faster than the compilers we are using nowadays and 10000x faster in case of small
>incremental changes. (And I am *not* talking about using 100 Nehalems.)
>

I don't know how much blame belongs to the compilers but it seems a lot belongs to the language.

C++ programs have an enormous amount of their substance in header files. Cross dependencies commonly result in every header being included in every compilation. All that code gets compiled again and again and again.

Now perhaps precompiled headers can help but the compilers don't get any help from the language. They need to work as if it were all compiled as one piece with all those headers. They may be bad because the compilers aren't clever enough or because the language gives them an intractable job.

Even plain old C suffers the effect of pulling in tons of headers but not as much of the program is in those headers so it has less impact on compile time. Preprocessor defines, structures and function prototypes just aren't as much work as the code people put in C++ header files.