What's the difference between autogenerated C code and compiling to assembly or machine code? Seems academic to me.

The main flaw of autocode is that a human can't easily read and validate it, so you can't really use it as source code. In my experience, this is one of the biggest flaws of these types of systems. You have to version control the file for whatever proprietary graphical programming software generated the code in the first place, and as much as we like to complain about git, it looks like a miracle by comparison.

▲

mmooss 3 days ago | parent [-]

> What's the difference between autogenerated C code and compiling to assembly or machine code? Seems academic to me.

It's an interesting question and point, but those are two different things and there is no reason to think you'll get the same results. Why not compile from natural language, if that theory is true?

▲

_flux 2 days ago | parent [-]

Natural language does not have a specification, while both C and assembly do.

	▲	mmooss 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		The C specification is orders of magnitude more complex and is much less defined than assembly. Arguably, the same could be said comparing natural language with C. I admit that's mostly philosphical. But I think saying 'C can autogenerate reliable assembly, therefore a specification can autogenerate reliable C' is also about two different problems.