Hardware references.

[Kragen]

On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, Ray Dillinger wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Oct 1998, John Morrison wrote:
> >If you're going to do native-code, I understand.  If you're going to
> >compile to a bytecode, then you could potentially save yourself a
> >certain amount of work.
> 
> I am absolutely going native-code.  Bytecode doesn't perform 
> as well.  LISPs in general suffer from a reputation of having
> inferior performance. The reputation is no longer as deserved as
> it once was, but political realities being what they are, unless
> the OS and applications can be observably **FASTER** than
> Windows (an easy target, but still) we will have to cope with
> those prejudices.  So -- no shortcuts.  

I have been told that some bytecoded Smalltalk applications were much
faster than most native-code Windows/MFC applications.  Having
programmed with MFC, I believe it.

> And more importantly, why bother doing it at all if we don't do
> the best we can do?

Have you read "Worse is Better"?  The answer is: because you might get
it done much sooner.

> It's not a masochistic streak, I don't think.  Doing things
> *right* actually feels very good.

Yes, it does.

Kragen (who gets a lot less done than he could if he were less of a 
	perfectionist)

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
A well designed system must take people into account.  . . .  It's hard to
build a system that provides strong authentication on top of systems that
can be penetrated by knowing someone's mother's maiden name.  -- Schneier