On Jan 5, 2015, at 3:24 AM, Alaric Snell-Pym <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 03/01/15 15:26, Esther Schindler wrote:
> Greetings, Esther! What kinds of compilers have you optimised, out of
> interest? I have studied traditional compiler optimisation, but by
> day-job I tend to optimise a compiler from SQL queries into a
> stack-based intermediate representation that's run in a highly parallel
> fashion across clusters of servers, which is an almost totally different
> world, but good fun nonetheless!

It's more than 20 years since I worked on a compiler. Back then it mostly 
traditional compilers, such as the FORTRAN compiler for the Wang VS 
minicomputer. Remember those? 

I switched to writing full time in 1992. One reason why was that, if I had a 
"bug" in my writing, I knew _right where it was_.

> 
>> Anything else you'd like to know?
> 
> What's your magnetic permeability? I mean, obviously, humans are
> probably about as magnetically permeable as salt water, but the less
> significant digits probably vary a lot based on all sorts of interesting
> factors. Does anybody measure this property of humans? Nobody ever asks
> people that. If I ever again build a Web site with "password recovery
> security questions", that'll be the one I'll ask, as not other Web site
> will have it for hackers to steal and come to my site to steal people's
> accounts. Yeah!

I confess. I don't know. #GeekShame


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