🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct11.133704.5600@ucc.su.OZ.AU> maxtal@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (John MAX Skaller) writes:
>In article <Eep9xSi00Vp_4391Iw@andrew.cmu.edu> osoelgaultier+@CMU.EDU (Stefan Monnier) writes:
>>
>>Every advance in languages has been associated with an increased overhead:
>>from assembler to C, from C to C++: every time you switch to a higher level
>>language you lose some speed. 
>>
>
>	Not true!
(Many examples provided)

Some additional points:

1.  I have seen assembler code that was written because the routine was
    expected to be time critical.  The code looked good on the surface, but
    saved all registers at the start and restored them all at the end.  This
    used up so much time that an equivalent routine I wrote in FORTRAN ran
    20% faster without even using any optimization options on the compiler.

2.  RISC processors exacerbate this problem of writing efficient code.  It
    really is true that the compiler may know how to handle most programming
    constructs better than you do.

3.  Advances in languages allow us to use more appropriate data structures
    and algorithms for the same amount of development time.  For this reason,
    the program written in the higher level language using those advances in
    languages is sometimes orders of magnitude faster than the one written in
    the lower level language.

4.  Sometimes speed is not as much an issue as being able to write the functionality
    in the first place.  

Stuart
--
: Stuart MacMartin                                    email: sjm@bnr.ca      :
: Bell-Northern Research                              phone: (613) 763-5625  :
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