[Newbies] Re: Binary file I/O performance problems

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

At Sat, 6 Sep 2008 08:29:35 -0700,
David Finlayson wrote:
> 
> The next generation of workstations we buy will probably have dozens
> of cores but hard drives and memory will only be marginally faster (if
> history is any indication). So, if I/O is the rate limiting factor,
> not cpu speed, why not look for the most productive programing
> environment possible? I've always read that Smalltalk is often
> considered the most productive programing environment ever invented.
> So I wanted to give it a try. But I am discovering (from the point of
> view of a scientist programmer like myself) it lacks a lot in
> comparison to Matlab or Python (both high-level) and especially C and
> C++ (lots and lots of library code).

  That observation on the sophistication level is quite right.  And,
Squeak's moving/compacting GC would give you some more penalty
compared to other implementations when it involves 10's of MB to GB of
data.

> I am going to have to weigh the pros and cons of whether it makes
> since to push on with this.

  We tend to do something just ok for its own need, but listening to the
other people's needs is always fun (and depressing^^).

-- Yoshiki