Forgotten WATCOM
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Is Watcom C++ is outdated now? I'm aware of the openwatcom and its current progress...but would it be an alternative to VC++ or GCC under linux, in terms of features, compliance to recent standards, and quality of code...???
It's not listed under supported compilers for Boost, despite listing Metrowerks and VC6.
This alone would be an indication that Watcom is either unpopular, or has poor support for advanced language features.
No.
VC++ and GCC are as good as it gets, and can be considered "best".
Intel's compiler may give you some benefit with regard to code quality under certain circumstances.
But outside of a few very narrow problems, features and library support is what you want, second only to development activity.
This alone would be an indication that Watcom is either unpopular, or has poor support for advanced language features.
Quote:but would it be an alternative to VC++ or GCC under linux, in terms of features, compliance to recent standards, and quality of code...???
No.
VC++ and GCC are as good as it gets, and can be considered "best".
Intel's compiler may give you some benefit with regard to code quality under certain circumstances.
But outside of a few very narrow problems, features and library support is what you want, second only to development activity.
Quote:Original post by HugosHoH
so this means even Intel compiler is not as good as GCC?
What is good?
When comparing MVC2008 and Intel's compiler, I've gotten similar results. There's notable differences, but they aren't consistent. Depending on test case, either one performed better.
On Linux, Intel's compiler should outperform gcc, but I didn't test it. It's just an assumption, so don't take it for granted.
But, here's the catch. GCC and MSVC are free. MSVC comes with killer IDE as well, and full Windows platform integration. Intel's compiler isn't free, or cheap, and is nothing but bare bone compiler. Unless I've missed something, Intel's compiler doesn't come with standard library, which means you need to use your platform's version, usually GCC's or MSVC's one.
It does however come with advanced optimized libraries for math and threading. Both great, but vendor (Intel) specific and proprietary.
Unless you're in a commercial business that gains great benefit from those extensions, you'll find it hard to cover the cost, when you have two solid alternatives. Under Windows, you'll likely need MSVC as IDE anyway.
That and intel's compiler plays rough with amd. By that I mean when it detects amd processors that support sse it won't take the sse code path because it checks for intels cpuid.
Intel's compiler is free on Linux last time I checked, but not free on Windows. It is great for OpenMP support.
I remember when Watcom was supposed to be amazing, in the DOS era...
I remember when Watcom was supposed to be amazing, in the DOS era...
Quote:Original post by d000hg
Intel's compiler is free on Linux last time I checked, but not free on Windows. It is great for OpenMP support.
Non-commercial only. And yes, Intel's is better for concurrent programming.
Quote:That and intel's compiler plays rough with amd. By that I mean when it detects amd processors that support sse it won't take the sse code path because it checks for intels cpuid.
IMHO, algorithms that make full use of SIMD still need to be hand-coded. C++ simply isn't a language that would be viable for automatic parallelization.
Last time I heard of Watcom was when quake or was it doom source code was released to the web and it was one of the supported compilers since ID software used it back in the day.
There's also Comeaus C++ compiler which is supposedly one of the most standards compliant compilers around, but it's not free.
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