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What Casey Muratori thinks about compilers

@casey-muratori · 37 positions · 0 changes of mind

Game and engine programmer, creator of Handmade Hero and of the Computer Enhance course on performance-aware programming, and a long-standing critic of object-oriented design orthodoxy. He worked on the user interface of Jonathan Blow's The Witness, which is the codebase his writing on compression-oriented programming draws its examples from.

Casey Muratori did not write this page.

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3 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Casey Muratori has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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  1. Our readingSource code in any language tells you nothing about what the CPU is actually asked to do; only the compiler's assembly output does, and reading it is a skill every serious programmer should have.

    Their wordsIf I look at the assembly language output from that compiler, I know exactly what the CPU is being asked to do. And it's not that hard to be able to learn to read assembly language so that you can see very quickly is the CPU being asked to do the things that I think it should be asked to do them.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 6th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

  3. Our readingAssembly is far simpler to learn than the modern web stack: anyone who can vertically centre a div can learn to read it.

    Their wordsit's really much easier if you can understand how to center a div as they say if you can vertically center a div in HTML then you can probably learn assembly language I would say

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 7th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting

  5. Our readingWhat clean-code polymorphism really costs you is not the virtual call but the optimizations the compiler can no longer perform once it cannot see what runs.

    Their wordsBut it's the cost of the compiler not being able to do any optimizations. That's the actual cost. And that cost can be severe.

    ↗Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratoriyoutube.com 20th of 26 in this recording

    Interesting