From: MenTaLguY <mental@...>
Date: 2005-11-03T11:09:01+09:00
Subject: Re: Anonymous methods, blocks etc. (Cont. 'default block params')

On Thu, 2005-11-03 at 09:32 +0900, Trans wrote:
> gwtmp01@mac.com wrote:
> 
> Yes it is, but not as an actual implementation. Once again Ruby proves
> it's ability to pull rabbits out of hats ;) And while that's plenty
> cool, this implemenation using delgate is terribly inefficent.

That doesn't mean it's unusable, however.  If 90% of your program's time
is doing something other than calling methods on these proxied objects
directly the extra overhead really might not matter.

This might be because, for example:

 - you're calling an iterator method on the proxied object; you only pay
for the initial call, not each iteration

 - you're getting a reference to another object from an accessor on the
proxied object, and mostly work with that other object instead; so you
only pay the penalty once to get the reference to that other object

 - the promised computation is extremely time-consuming

Lazy evaluation can also open the door to efficient algorithms which
would otherwise be prohibitively difficult to code.

-mental