Which is true, but too convenient for people who know very little
about compilers, because they've never written one. In the
bureaucratic sense the demiurge is to create an established Church out
of any real advance in human enlightenment (whether the Sermon on the
Mount or the third law of thermodynamics) lest further advance destroy
the careers of the priests. What's fascinating is this Scholastic
approach to C, which resembles the way in which the "Forty Year Old
Virgin" in the eponymous movie talks about sex:
"You know how when you grab a woman's breast... it feels like... a bag
of sand."
(The "heap" is a DOS term...it feels like a bag of sand).
"I dated this girl for a while... she was really a... nasty freak. She
just loved to... get down with... sex all the time. It was like...
anytime of day... she was like, 'Yeah, let's go! I'm so nasty!'" And
I'd be nailing her and she'd be like, 'Oh, you're nailing me! cool!'"
(The stack is not in the standard. I was in the sack with this stack,
and it screamed, "give it to me Seebie".)
Indeed, fantasizing onanistically about what compilers do is a common
trope in the break room where we go around the prickly pear at four
o'clock in the morning, trying to find bugs because the client has
told us we must find ten or else (or some shit assignment like that).
This is why actual people who have written compilers find here that
the shits redefine their work as anything but, using absurd litmus
tests (when in fact to compile to interpretive language is
compilation). They live in a world that they must perforce mythologize
for their sanity, constructed by giants of old such as Brian
Kernighan.
"Actually writing a compiler" is lese-majeste although compiling
special purpose languages is an excellent way of solving real
problems. Instead, one is expected to find the local computing thug
and flatter him.
T. S. Eliot
Animula
Issues from the hand of God, the simple soul,
To a flat world of changing lights and noise,
To light, dark, dry, damp, chilly or warm,
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs
Rising or falling,
Grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree
Pleasure in the wind, the sunlight and the sea'
Studies the sunlit pattern on the floor.
And running stays around a silver tag:
Confounds the actual and the fanciful,
Content with playing cards and kings and queens,
What the fairies do and what the servants say.
The heavy burden of the growing soul
Perplexes and offends more, day by day,
Week by week, offends and perplexes more.
With the imperatives of "so it seems"
And may and may not, desire and control.
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Issues from the hand of time, the simple soul,
Irresolute and sefish, misshapen, lame
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blot,
Shadow of its own shadow, spectre of its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in silence after the viaticum,
Pray for Guiterriez, avid of speed and power
For Boudin, blown to pieces,
For this one, who made a great fortune
And that one who went his own way.
Pray for Floret by the boorhound slain between the yew trees,
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
