On Tuesday, November 19, 2002, at 02:49  PM, Cees de Groot wrote:

> John M McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> said:
>> so really your makeUnixSeed, makeSeedFromSound should go in Random,
>> with say
>> some osVersion checking to avoid opening /dev/urandom on all the
>> macintoshs and
>> windows boxes in the world.
>>
> I agree. I'm just being modest - as you may have noticed, I have a  
> bigger
> output in verbs and semi-good ideas than in code, so when I get around
> publishing code I try to limit the scope of the change and leave the  
> stuff
> with impact to the experts.

Ah I'm pair programming remotely, beside I'm responsible for the crummy  
code that
creates the seed, which is a duplication of new in the Random code  
(Duh!).

>
>> Also lowering overhead at startup time is good, how many ms does this
>> add if we need to load some sound microphone drivers
>> powerup the stereo etc?
>>
> Is it an issue? The code is called once at the first call and then  
> once in
> 100,000 UUID's.

When I was working on the large file name support and > 2GB file size  
support on the macintosh VM
I trimmed quite a bit of ugly code that was generating excessive I/O at  
startup time. That reduced
the amount of time it takes to 'SNAP' the Squeak UI to the foreground  
when Squeak starts. Somehow having it 'SNAP'
to the foreground implies performance. So adding code which might or  
might not slow down that experience should
be avoid.

--
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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