From: Keith Gaughan Date: 2006-07-27T10:35:52+09:00 Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 10:07:00AM +0900, Chad Perrin wrote: > On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 09:26:45AM +0900, David Pollak wrote: > > > On 7/26/06, Chad Perrin wrote: > > > > >On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:42:46AM +0900, David Pollak wrote: > > > > > >> There are some applications that will never perform as in Java (e.g., > > >> stuff that's heavily oriented to bit manipulation.) But for many > > >> classes of applications (e.g., spreadsheets) Java can perform as well > > >> as C. > > > > > >Is that heavily optimized Java vs. "normal" (untweaked) C? > > > > No. That's heavily optimized Java vs. heavily optimized C. I spent a > > fair amount of time chatting with the Excel team a while back. They > > cared as much about performance as I did. They spent a lot more time > > and money optimizing Excel than I did with Integer. They had far more > > in terms of tools and access to compiler tools than I did (although > > Sun was very helpful to me.) > > Excel isn't a very good point of comparison for C. For one thing, it's > not C -- it's C++. For another, it has a pretty bad case of featuritis. Actually, the part that counts, calculation engine, comes in two varieties: a slow but provably correct version, and a fast, highly optimised version, a significant portion of which is written _assembly language_. MS use a battery of regression tests to ensure that the fast one always gives the same results as the slow one. Just because the bits that aren't performance sensitive are written in C++ doesn't mean that the rest of it is slow and bloated. K. -- Keith Gaughan - kmgaughan@eircom.net - http://talideon.com/ Life's too short to dance with ugly women.