[Vm-dev] Squeak and Pharo speed differences

[tim Rowledge]

> On 2020-05-14, at 9:47 PM, Shaping <shaping at uurda.org> wrote:
> 
> 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? 

The VM changes *are* in the VM code. If pharo haven't bothered to take advantage of them, that's their job to do. There are also image changes involved. Again, somebody has to do the work.

>  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?

Unlikely and unlikely.

>  
> Both Squeak and Pharo have slow text selection.  Pick any word in any pane, and double click it to select it. 

Really? I can't detect any difference. And that's with the Squeak running on a Pi and VW on a big iMac.

It mostly depends on how you detect a double-click as opposed to a single, or a mouse-down-drag etc.

> (Dolphin and VW have quick GUIs).  
Never used Dolphin but I disagree about the (currnet)VW GUI; I'm using both for work right now and Squeak (again, on a Pi vs the VW/iMac) seems much faster to me.


> Is speeding up the Pharo debugger with Spec2 a priority?  I can’t think of a better GUI-related priority for Pharo.

Why ask that here?

>  
>  
> Not speed-related:
>  
> -  How can I load additional fonts into Squeak?  Pharo does this with the font dialog’s Update button.

Font importer. It's right there in the Apps list, second row.

>  
> - 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. 

As a general UI point, leading edge action is rarely a good thing.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Long computations that yield zero are probably all for naught.