It’s not just about being deterministic. A compiler crucially follows clearly defined formal rules on what is a correct output given some input, which the programmer can fully rely on.
Most of the time, today. Mid 90s I was constantly checking compiler output for bugs, and finding them. Early 90s the compiler bugs were finding me, particularly in Borland Turbo C++. I turned off the linker optimizer in 1992 and couldn’t turn it back on until 2008 without getting difficult to identify bugs.
It’s not just about being deterministic. A compiler crucially follows clearly defined formal rules on what is a correct output given some input, which the programmer can fully rely on.
Most of the time, today. Mid 90s I was constantly checking compiler output for bugs, and finding them. Early 90s the compiler bugs were finding me, particularly in Borland Turbo C++. I turned off the linker optimizer in 1992 and couldn’t turn it back on until 2008 without getting difficult to identify bugs.