LLVM is a shit compiler

It's worse than GCC 4.5 in terms of speed, and that says A LOT

Linuxare: To what extent does the basic architecture of GCC need changes to support the language front-ends, such as the new GCC Java compiler?

Richard: I don't know anything about what's happening with the Java compiler. I stopped dealing with GCC around 1992 and I don't know what changes, if any, were needed. Some changes were needed mainly in the tree data structure, which is what programs get parsed into. Occasionally, when you handle a language that has the kind of construct that hasn't been handled before, if there's no way to represent it with the existing tree data structure, you need to add something so you can represent it. Things like methods and core methods needed a way to be represented, so we added them.

Linuxcare: Does GCC still use a LISP-like intermediary language?

Richard: Printed syntax is what's LISP-like. It's not really LISP-like in the sense that it consists of tupelos that point to a number of other tupelos, which is not by any means a new format for priority use. It's printed out in a LISP-like syntax because that makes it easy to work with in EMACS.

Linuxcare: How did you come to choose LISP as the EMACS engine?

Richard: LISP is the most powerful programming language, and if you want an interpreter, LISP is the best. None of the other languages come anywhere near LISP in their power. The most exciting things about LISP are read, eval, and print. If you look at other languages, they have no equivalent for any of those.