[Vm-dev] Making a Slower VM

[btc at openinworld.com]

Sean P. DeNigris wrote:
>  
> We often talk about making the VM faster. How about making it slower? In
> 1980, there were some optimizations that were needed for Smalltalk to be
> even usable, but now:
> - Moore's Law has theoretically given us 131072 more computing power
> (2^((2014-1980)/2))
> - Cog runs up to 3x slower than C [1]
> - Ruby, which is widely accepted, seems to be much slower than Cog [2]
>
> For example, inlined functions can be baffling for new users. 

Not VM related but it sparks a random idea - how about syntax 
highlighting inlined messages with a different colour?
cheers -ben

> I just ran
> into this myself when writing an #ifNil:ifNotNil: that was not picked up by
> the system [3], and Ungar and Smith describe several cases in the History of
> Self (pg. 9-5).
>
> How many of these are premature optimizations that can be eliminated, or at
> least turned off by default until they're actually needed? I know Clement
> mentioned in [3] that some make a big difference, but it would certainly
> make the system more uniform and easy to understand.
>
> [1]
> http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/pipermail/pharo-project/2011-February/042489.html
> [2]
> http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=yarv&lang2=gcc
> [3] https://www.mail-archive.com/pharo-dev@lists.pharo.org/msg11694.html
>
>
>
> -----
> Cheers,
> Sean
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Making-a-Slower-VM-tp4742391.html
> Sent from the Squeak VM mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>