gcc vs. commercial C compiler (Sun'

[mcdonald at uxe.cso.uiuc.edu]

>Boeing airplanes are a marvel
>of safety and reliability as a result of such attention to detail.

They are? Really? Attention to the detail of which side the burning
engine is on? To which cargo hold the fire is in?

Presumably, life-critical software would not be ruined by bugs in 
a compiler. I would see to it, were I so rash as to be in such a business,
that, among other tests, there would be a group whose job it would be
to examine the assembler output of the compiler to see that the compiler
did its job right. I would attempt to have a group look at the output
directly, without recourse to the source code, to try to figure out
what it would do. There is probably a limit to the size of system where
this could be done: pacemaker progarms on the possible side,
Stars Wars on the impossible side, and an airplane somewhere in the middle.

Doug McDonald