zlacker

>>paulca+(OP)
This is a fantastic example of how many resources we waste with modern software. Sure it's not packed full of the kind of eye-candy we're used to, but lots of the basics are there, and it's thousands of times smaller than even OSs used on smart phones.

iOS 8 for example takes up 5 Gigabytes, Windows 10 x64 is 11 Gigabytes.

>>bane+Xd
Something to consider is whether an inherent limitation of HLLs is that they simply cannot compete with Asm on efficiency, or if the common mantra of "the compiler can always do better" is ultimately true. The presence of projects like this certainly calls into question such points.

Put it another way, could the same results be achieved with C, or even something much higher level like Haskell or Lisp, if only compilers were better at generating code?

I've looked at a lot of disassembled code over the years, and it's extremely easy to tell whether something was generated by a compiler or hand-written by a human; the "texture" is quite different.