Remember the Vasa! by Bjarne Stroustrup

[Wu Wei]

On Tuesday, 29 May 2018 at 07:25:39 UTC, Stefan Koch wrote:
>
> As a a compiler developer, I can guarantee that at some point 
> you _need_ to understand all of the language.
> If you don't you will mis-compile code.
>
> Also the more complex the language gets the more special-case 
> handling needs to be added to the compiler making it slower and 
> more brittle.
>
> Unconstrained complexity growth is a pretty scary thing.

Could this be more a problem of compiler 'architecture'?

Or perhaps hardware architecture?

Can we design better architecture (at all levels) to better 
accomodate inevitable change?

Could it be a problem of not having enough compiler writers - 
where each knows some part(s), but together they know all the 
parts? Collaboration is good way to manage complexity.

A compiler writer insisting they must know it all, (while 
understandable) is an unatural constraint. You'll end up like 
Scott Meyers - decades of effort learning, but can never 
understand it, because change is a moving target.