Why everyone should develop on a Pi at least sometimes (was: Re: [squeak-dev] International text input on X11)

tim Rowledge tim at rowledge.org
Thu May 5 22:42:57 UTC 2016


A classic problem we have is that people devise UI stuff and other widgetry on a fast computer. Because, of course they do, why not? The issue is then using that stuff on more mundane machines - or even embedded devices. Whereupon we discover to our horror that not having a 750THz intel 256bit gigacore with 42Pb of RAM means that our nice clever button takes 45 years to handle a mouse click. 

So to combat this, it really would be smart for everyone doing development to at least occasionally run on a less frenetic machine such as a Pi. A Pi (especially a 3) is fast enough to be pretty nice for running current Squeak, even with Shout operational. But it is slow enough to show up places where your algorithm really isn’t doing a good job, or where your UI doohickey is really spending a terrible number of cycles to animate that cute little effect. 

For extra effect, run on a non-cog vm too. That might be too much masochism for everyday development but it will *really* show you were performance is being wasted.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: CPM: Change Programmer's Mind




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