[guenthert]

What about assertions that are meant to detect bad hardware? I'd think that's not too uncommon, particularly in shops building their own hardware. Noise on the bus, improper termination, ESD, dirty clock signal, etc. -- there are a million reasons why a bit might flip. I wouldn't want the compiler to optimize "obviously wrong" code out anymore then empty loops.

[deathanatos]

I think if you're in a language that's doing constant-propagation optimizations, you work around that in one of two ways:

1. you drop down to assembly.

2. you use functions that are purpose built to be sequence points the optimizer won't optimize through. E.g., in Rust, for the case you mention, `read_volatile`.

In either case, this gives the human the same benefit the code is giving the optimizer: an explicit indication that this code that might appear to be doing nothing isn't.