[Enh][VM] primitiveApplyToFromTo for the heart of the enumeration of collections?

Klaus D. Witzel klaus.witzel at cobss.com
Sun Sep 17 07:37:43 UTC 2006


Hi Yanni,

on Sun, 17 Sep 2006 04:48:12 +0200, you wrote:
> Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>> Your arguing for the status quo is way too conservative for a living   
>> community, there was a reason why people asked for speeding up  
>> enumeration  of collections and also why it was suggested to consider  
>> the IBM approach  #apply:from:to:.
>
> I don't think it's conservative at all, just practical.
> Changing the VM, by adding a new primitive, will affect
> all VM development from that point forward. IMHO, such
> a change requires a rock solid case to support it. At this
> point is seems hard to justify the complexity and fragility
> (i.e. depending of primitive failure code running) of the
> proposed performance optimization. Introducing a new VM
> primitive has got to be way low down on the list of ways
> to meet a performance requirement.

I fully disagree :) I'm used to plan software change for years to come,  
usually the next 3-5 releases (equiv. 3-5 years). Now, there will be a  
time when older VM's will no longer run the then current .image, for  
example when 4.0 comes out. Not making use of the time in between is,  
literally speaking, the often cited waste of time, viewed from a more  
pragmatic perspective.

Poor young primitiveApplyToFromTo cannot be adapted to in a minute. There  
is much work to be done and much feedback to be collected from all the  
various platforms, before it can be concluded that "this was a good idea,  
it performs as expected". This has to happen in the time before 4.0, for  
sure.

Not doing anything but waiting for Godot has nothing to do with  
innovation, only with stagnation, IMO.

Thanks for your comment.

/Klaus




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