Regulations are like lines of code in a software project. They're good if well written, bad if not, and what matters more is how well they fit into the entire solution

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gessha 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A major difference with regulations is there’s no guaranteed executor of those metaphorical lines of code. If the law gets enforced, then yes, but if nobody enforces it, it loses meaning.

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estimator7292 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If the law is code, then law enforcement is a JITter

(joke)

	▲	mr_toad 34 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		A jitter is like a lawyer on retainer. Law enforcement is more like the OS that segfaults you when you fail to follow the lawyers advice.
	▲	dijit 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Optimised compiler makes sense though. Unenforceable laws go unenforced, undefined behaviour is undefined and varies based on compiler (law enforcement agency or officer).

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lucketone 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And lines of code is like the mass of an airplane.

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samdoesnothing 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In general you want as few as possible of both.

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econ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You could also optimize everything for future updates that optimize things even further for even more updates...

Humm.. that was supposed to be a joke but our law making dev team isn't all that productive to put it mildly. Perhaps some of that bloat would be a good thing until we are brave enough to do the full rewrite.

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banana_sandwich 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[dead]

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AceJohnny2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

that's right. This is the reason all my code looks like an entry to PerlGolf. /s

The world's complicated. "Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, and wrong"

Simplicity is a laudable goal, but it's not always the one thing to optimize for.

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lo_zamoyski 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah, but "simplicity" is not necessarily "fewest lines of code".

Code is first and foremost for human consumption. The compiler's job is to worry about appeasing the machine.

(Of course, that's the normative ideal. In practice, the limits of compilers sometimes requires us to appease the architectural peculiarities of the machine, but this should be seen as an unfortunate deviation and should be documented for human readers when it occurs.)

	▲	AceJohnny2 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Code is first and foremost for human consumption. The compiler's job is to worry about appeasing the machine. Tangentially, it continues to frustrate me that C code organization directly impacts performance. Want to factorize that code? Pay the cost of a new stack frame and potentially non-local jump (bye, ICache!). Want it to not do that? Add more keywords ('inline') and hope the compiler applies them. (I kind of understand the reason for this. Code Bloat is a thing, and if everything was inlined the resulting binary would be 100x bigger)