[Newbies] Speed

[Herbert König]

Hi John,

JW> Absolute beginner playing with smalltalk.  I have a simple
JW> program that opens a number of text files, plays with data closes
JW> files and gives a count of things in the files. (Its actually my
JW> Squeak version of the Cincom VW Tutorial).  I have run it on
JW> Squeak, Pharo and Cuis images. What suprised me was the difference
JW> in speeds.  I haven't done tried to time it (I should do that or

in case you don't know how:
Time millisecondsToRun: [your code goes here]
returns what it says.

JW> at least work out how to) but Squeak and Pharo take about the same
JW> time whereas Cuis is significantly quicker. I know its a cut down
JW> image but the difference is remarkable.  Is this to be expected? 

If you talk about files, a significant part of the time might be spent
in the OS which depends on cacheing.

So unless there is significant processing, file access might dominate
(and invalidate) the measured times.

Cuis has removed and cleaned up things which tends to speed things up
but usually not to a noticeable degree. Even if you hit a
significantly sped up method, such results should not be generalized.

Cuis is not advertised for higher speed but for cleaner code, less
bulk and better looks. IMHO that is.


-- 
Cheers,

Herbert