100 Compiler Options and You are Out

California, along with Major League Baseball, is among the institutions that have a policy of “Three Strikes and You are Out.”

I suggest the same rule should apply to compiler writers.

For example, I just tried to port some software that makes use of gcc, the standard Linux C compiler, only to get an error message about a problem with an option.

I then did “man gcc” to review the list of options. As best as I can tell, there are well over a hundred of them.

This is ridiculous. How can any person be expected to make meaningful use of such a superfluity of programming madness.

Let’s do the math. I once read there are about 2**80 atoms in the universe. If there are 100 options to gcc, then are there 2**100 ways of compiling a program, which is 10**20 more times options than there are atoms in the universe!.

If we assign one Richard Stallman to test each possibility, then we need at least 10**20 RMS’s just to test the path flow for options!

GCC Folks: Get your act together. If you can’t come up with a small, reasonable set of options, then I suggest you should leave the compiler game and let the grownups take over.

Four colors suffice to color a map. I’ll give you double that, so can you please cut the number of options down to 8?