[rescue] Mozilla Firefox

[Dave McGuire]

On Apr 22, 2004, at 1:33 PM, Joshua Boyd wrote:
>>> I blame OO.
>>
>>   OO is at fault a lot of the time, I think.  All mainstream computer
>> processors are purely procedural in nature, not object-oriented...OO
>> code just doesn't map to these processors all that well.
>
> I don't think it is that poor of a mapping.  Sure all of today's
> processors are procedural, but still many paradigms run well with 
> modern
> compiler technology.

   You've just reinforced my point while trying to disagree with it. ;) 
What you're saying here is that a modern optimizer will take the OO 
code and wrangle it into something that maps into a procedural 
processor more effectively.  Thus, changing a basic element of OO 
programming to make it work right on a real processor.

   It's kinda like taking a poorly-performing Ethernet network and 
making it fully switched to alleviate congestion.  That's modifying a 
very basic underlying part of the design of Ethernet (the whole point 
of CSMA/CD) in order to make it perform well.

   It's also like making a car that has no steering wheel, but having an 
ambulance and a tow truck following you around everywhere to clean up 
the accidents.

   Why not just use something that works right in the first place?

> No argument here.  Though you shouldn't have to be very close to the
> hardware to realize that opening 20 connections is slower than one
> connection, or loading 20 images is slower than loading two.

   Agreed, but there's just no getting around basic stupidity.

>>   The same problem exists with Perl...It has a lot of very high-level
>> constructs, like associative arrays for example, which make 
>> application
>> development (as if anyone should be developing *applications* in a
>> scripting language, but that's another story) much easier.  The
>> trouble
>
> You mean like the way autocad, emacs, and a good number of other
> applications are written?

   You've named two applications.  You have dozens, if not hundreds more 
on your UNIX machines that aren't written in this way.  This is the 
exception, not the rule.

>   I thought writing applications in scripting languages was the unix 
> way?

   I think you're using a different UNIX than I am.

        -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke