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From: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Aggressive optimization
Summary: A roomful of monkeys.
Message-ID: <158@garth.UUCP>
Date: 19 Nov 90 20:13:25 GMT
References: <5059:Nov1323:43:2290@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <5839@lanl.gov>
Reply-To: smryan@garth.UUCP (Steven Ryan)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 22

>Fine.  The compiler won't be able to determine this one.  Neither will
>the human programmer.  If the programmer knows a priori which branch

I haven't been following all the fascinating details (yawn) of this
discussion, but if the arguments are based on this assumption, they
are invalid. That is, the assumption that you must only consider what
a reasonable programmer would do.

Unless you have an algorithm for distinguishing reasonable and
unreasonable programs.

Regardless of whether humans are computationally more powerful than
computers, an argument must consider any possible program, whether
from a reasonable programmer or a roomful of Cobol programmers (or
monkeys, if there is any difference).

For my sake, please, just pretend to be rigorous. Like all that nonsense
that computer=fsm without any demonstration that the total external media
is a priori bounded.
-- 
...!uunet!ingr!apd!smryan                                       Steven Ryan
...!{apple|pyramid}!garth!smryan              2400 Geng Road, Palo Alto, CA