[Vm-dev] Squeak and Pharo speed differences

[Shaping]

Hi all.

 

 

Squeak 5.3:  

  Time millisecondsToRun: [ 100000 factorial  ] 6250

 

Pharo 8:

  Time millisecondsToRun: [ 100000 factorial  ] 7736

 

Why the difference?

 

Squeak 5.3 release notes describe arithmetic improvements.  Nice.  I crunch very big numbers, and these improvements therefore have value.  Why would they not be included in OSVM (forked or not) and the basic class-set for both Squeak and Pharo? 

 

Playing with Squeak 5.3, I’ve noticed that the GUI is snappier.  Browser ergonomics are better too (for me at least), but that can be fixed/tuned in either environ to suit the developer.  (Still that’s some work I prefer not to do.)  Pharo GUIs are now generally slower, except for the Launcher, which is delightfully quick because it is written in Spec2.  I presume that all Pharo GUIs will eventually (ETA?) be written in Spec2 and that Pharo will then be quick in all its GUIs.  The obvious question is:  Will Squeak be improving GUI look/behavior and speed with Spec2?  If not, can I load Spec2 into Squeak so that I can do new GUI work there?

 

Both Squeak and Pharo have slow text selection.  Pick any word in any pane, and double click it to select it.  When I do this, I sense a 75 to 100 ms latency between the end of the double click and the selection highlight appearing on the word.   I thought I’d entered a wormhole.  So I did the same experiment in VW 8.3.2, VS Code, and Notepad, and all three showed undetectable latencies.   This matters to me.  I’m trying to port from VW to Pharo or Squeak (for a really long time now), and can’t push myself past the text-selection delay problem.  Can text-selection speed be improved to the level of VW’s?   Can someone sketch the algo used and/or point me to the right class/methods.  

 

The Squeak debugging experience step-to-step is much quicker.  The latencies in Pharo after button- release are very long.  I estimate 100 to 150 ms.   That’s too long for me to work productively.  I lose my mental thread with many of those delays, and have to restart the thought.  It’s a serious problem, caused mostly by acclimation to no detectable latency for many years (Dolphin and VW have quick GUIs).  Is speeding up the Pharo debugger with Spec2 a priority?  I can’t think of a better GUI-related priority for Pharo.

 

 

Not speed-related:

 

-  How can I load additional fonts into Squeak?  Pharo does this with the font dialog’s Update button.

 

- Where in the Squeak and Pharo images can I change mouse-selection behavior to be leading-edge?  Some of the Squeak panes have this; others don’t.  I want leading-edge action in all panes, and wish the feature were in Preferences/Settings. 

 

 

 

Shaping

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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