forgotmyacct2

Agreed. One of the main properties of a (good) build system, is very aggressive caching. This only works if your build steps are deterministic. From my experience (testing firmware for embedded devices), even if your firmware simulation is totally deterministic, there is plenty of non-determinism created by UB, memory corruption, crazy things interns do with test scripts... So we don't typically cache our test results.

I vaguely remember (a decade or so ago) the demand for beef outstripping the demand for leather, leading to a glut of leather and a subsequent crash in price. I don't really eat beef anymore, so I wonder if there would still be a leather surplus if everyone stopped eating beef, but we still relied on cows for dairy products?