Talks to Watch

CppCon 2019: Matt Godbolt “Compiler Explorer: Behind The Scenes”

29K views · Oct 9, 2019 · 1:00:21 · 2 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2021–2025

Matt Godbolt tells the story of Compiler Explorer, from a hacky basement server to a cloud-scaled service handling tens of thousands of daily requests. He also shows its features and how it is built.

Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as the source on how Compiler Explorer began and for its lesser-known features like the machine code analyzer.

“a cool feature he presented is the integrated LLVM Machine Code Analyser tool”HN comment, 2021

What Hacker News said 4

RecommendsflohofwoeMar 2021

“There's a few nice hidden features presented in Matt Godbolt's talk here”

Matt Godbolt presents hidden features of Compiler Explorer.

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There's a few nice hidden features presented in Matt Godbolt's talk here: this video As for LLVM IR output, just use the right clang command line options: link Likewise for WASM: link

in “How to Read Assembly Language” · view on HN
RecommendsjiggawattsJul 2021

“a cool feature he presented is the integrated LLVM Machine Code Analyser tool”

Shows the LLVM machine code analyzer timeline and resource views inside Compiler Explorer.

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I recently watched the CppCon 2019 talk by Matt Godbolt "Compiler Explorer: Behind The Scenes"[1], and a cool feature he presented is the integrated LLVM Machine Code Analyser tool. If you look at the "timeline" and "resource" views of how a Zen 3 executes a typical assembly snippet, it is absolutely mind blowing. That beast of a CPU has so many resources it's just crazy. [1] this video

in “Apple and Intel first to use TSMC 3nm” · view on HN
Cites itpjmlpJul 2021

“Here is one talk from Matt Godbolt about how Compiler Explorer was born”

Matt Godbolt explains how Compiler Explorer was born.

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Indeed, for Matt Godbolt, and the whole community that has added the remaining AOT languages, .NET is one of the few missing from Compiler Explorer, but it has a similar one at link and there is one at link for GPGPU shaders. Here is one talk from Matt Godbolt about how Compiler Explorer was born, CppCon 2019: Matt Godbolt “Compiler Explorer: Behind The Scenes” this video

in “Strict memcpy() bounds checking for the Linux kernel” · view on HN
Cites itturtledragonflyApr 2025

“part of a presentation on it, if you're not already familiar”

Presentation introducing Godbolt's Compiler Explorer.

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> But I wonder how common the knowledge is these days ... In one sense, it is less common, as you imply (though perhaps it's more that the number of high-level programmers have ballooned, rather than that the low-level ones have shrunk). In another sense, it's more accessible than ever, with tools like godbolt[1][2], VMs, cool profilers that show you a heatmap overlaid on assembly instructions, etc. And embedded development, where those details matter more, is still going strong, with IoT devices and so forth. [1] part of a presentation on it, if you're not already familiar: this video [2] the site itself: link

in “Dirty tricks 6502 programmers use (2019)” · view on HN