A list of common bugs

[spir]

On 03/17/2011 02:08 PM, bearophile wrote:
> Trass3r:
>
>> I guess pushing dmd's source code through that analyzer couldn't hurt as well.
>
> Recently I have understood a simple thing, that is why the creators of the SPARK (an Ada subset) compiler have written it using itself, also writing down proof of the whole compiler: you can't create a language that allows to write very bug-free code if its compiler has many bugs, because even if the user programs are bug-free, the bugs in the compiler will produce buggy programs anyway. This means that if D wants to become a quite safe (= low bug count) language, it will need to kill most of the bugs in its compiler(s) too.

First, "eat your own food".

There is another reason for a (low-level static compiled) language to be 
written in itself: it's a measure of its efficiency. Nicklaus Wirth said the 
(only) measure of a compiler's efficiency is the speed of compiling itself. If 
you think very hard ;-), you're probably it is a very very clever assertion. 
(As a side-effect, this also measures the language core's efficiency.)

Denis
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