From: Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>
Date: 2006-07-27T14:26:37+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C

On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 01:59:37PM +0900, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:19:24PM +0900, Keith Gaughan wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 11:38:34AM +0900, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > 
> > > > ...most of which is down to Windows itself, not Excel. Excel's
> > > > contribution to that lag isn't, I believe, all that great. So in this
> > > > regard, your complaint is more to do with GDI and so on than with Excel
> > > > itself.
> > > 
> > > Excel doesn't run so well on Linux, so I'll just leave that lying where
> > > it is.
> > 
> > In fairness, if you're judging it's performance based on running it in
> > Wine, that's not really a fair comparison. :-)
> 
> I'm judging it based on running it on Windows.  My point is that
> divorcing it from the only environment in which it runs (natively) is
> less than strictly sporting of you, when trying to discuss its
> performance characteristics (or lack thereof).

Wait... I did no such thing. All I said was that what interface
sluggishness you get from Excel can't be blamed on Excel. They're
performance characteristics that *can* be divorced from Excel (because
they're Window's own performance characteristic, not Excel's). Argue
those points, and you're arguing about the wrong software.

But Wine is an emulator, and while it does a good job approaching the
speed of Windows, it doesn't hit it, nor can it hit it. You're not
comparing like with like. Now that's far from sporting.

You're argument it disingenuous. Consider Cygwin running on Windows
compared to FreeBSD running on the same machine. I can make this
comparison because the machine I'm currently using dual-boots such a
setup. I run many of the same applications under Cygwin as I do under
FreeBSD on the same box. Those same applications running under Cygwin
are noticably slower than the native equivalents under FreeBSD. Do I
blame the software I'm running under Cygwin for being slow? No, because
I'm well aware that it zips along in its native environment. Do a blame
Cygwin? No, because it does an awful lot of work to trick the software
running under it that it's running on a *nix. Do I blame Windows? No,
because I use some of that software--gcc being an example--natively
under Windows and it performs just as well as when it's ran natively
under FreeBSD. Bringing Wine in is a red herring. Software cannot be
blamed for the environment it's executed in.

K.
-- 
Keith Gaughan - kmgaughan@eircom.net - http://talideon.com/
Fear is the greatest salesman.
		-- Robert Klein