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RE: Creating faster C/C++ binaries without changing a single line of code
As a non programmer - I understood nothing of what I saw....but I can tell this post is educationally value add so upvote city! :-)
Thanks :D I will try to explain it in simple terms even for non-programmers.
When a programmer writes some code, like
"IF temp_sensor > 150 THEN shutdown" (when the temperature rises over 150, then activate a shutdown routine),
...this then needs to be translated from human-readable language to machine language that our CPU can understand.
The machine language is generated by a "compiler". A program that converts our language to the language of the cpu.
Each compiler may take the human-readable code and create different machine code. If you have two compilers, you may have one which creates machine code that takes 1 second to perform the desired function, and another compiler producing more inefficient machine code which takes 2 second to perform it.
So what you want to do is to find the best possible compiler for your speed-critical operations, in order to waste as little time as possible. And this can be done by editing a text file (known as Makefile) which dictates how a program will be compiled file-by-file. So some files you send through one compiler, and some others through another compiler, trying to reduce the time wasted by inefficient machine code.
For example, a web browser consists of thousands of program files. Some are very speed critical - like video algorithms. If these are slow, then your experience in watching youtube suffers. You want the best possible compilers on the job to get the smoothest video possible.
I've officially entered the matrix! :-)
Thank you for the explanation - that made sense.