[almostgotcaught]

do people think this is insightful? do you?

> conventions are stupid

all conventions are stupid when examined through the lens of an isolated island dweller. you might as well be saying something like "you only need to drive on the left-hand side of the road when you're driving on public roads".

[userbinator]

Compilers were stupid, and that's how we ended up with this constant overhead of inefficiency long after they could've done better; it's only within the last decade or so that "custom calling conventions" started being even considered.

[almostgotcaught]

Calling conventions have no more to do with dumb or smart compilers than driving on the left-hand side of the road has to do with dumb or smart urban planners.

[userbinator]

Of course they do. An Asm programmer will naturally use the appropriate registers to minimise data movement (see also: PC BIOS interface - no stupid stack shit) depending on the circumstances, a stupid compiler will just push everything on the stack. A more intelligent compiler will behave more like the human programmer and decide how to pass parameters and save or restore registers on a case-by-case basis.