Thread: <?= operator

Originally Posted by Salem

> from people trying to squeeze every second of time in their solutions.
Gotta be a real moron to believe that the number of characters your program occupies has anything to do with the performance of the code.

Do they really believe that since a <?= b takes fewer characters than a < b ? a : b, that the compiler will generate fewer compare instructions or branch instructions?

Yes, you are correct; it is true that idiots exist. Either the programmer's an idiot, or the compiler creator is an idiot.

If there is some programmer or compiler creator here that I've just insulted, this thread should take an interesting turn :-)

Of course, these artifacts from nonstandardized days shouldn't be forcibly removed from compilers, so we're being a bit unfair.