Self Size
Dave Ungar
David.Ungar at Eng.Sun.COM
Sat Aug 22 01:52:20 UTC 1992
There are also other possibilities:
Which framebuffer are you using?
Is your machine thrashing?
Just how slow is it?
(It should seem OK on a 1+ -- I'm not sure what is going on here)
Dave
> From owner-self at self.stanford.edu Fri Aug 21 16:57:33 1992
> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 16:55:29 PDT
> To: rwk at quark.sbi.com
> Cc: self-interest at self.stanford.edu
> In-Reply-To: <9208212133.AA18405 at quark.sbi.com> (rwk at quark.sbi.com)
> Subject: Self Size
>
> Richard> Why does Self require so much memory?
>
> 1. Because we trade space for speed in certain places ("memory is
> cheap").
> 2. Because we have not optimized things for space. I.e. we know
> how to reduce the size of the code space and the object heap
> by around a factor of two, but we just haven't gotten around to
> implementing this space engineering.
>
> Richard> The Self UI runs somewhat slowly. The performance benchmarks
> Richard> quoted in the various Self documents would make me think the
> Richard> UI would be quite snappy.
>
> Richard> Why isn't it?
>
> 1. Because the compiler(s) are sometimes slow (that's why things run
> slower the first time you do them).
> 2. Because the compilers aren't perfect (yet :-). Note that we do
> not claim that *all* Self programs are x% of C - just the
> benchmarks. Also, the default system does *not* use the optimizing
> compiler for all compilations. Rather, it compiles unoptimized
> code first (to reduce compile pauses) and reoptimizes later when
> it sees that some code is frequently used. Unfortunately, the
> system doesn't always recompile the right thing, so the resulting
> code may be slower than if it had been compiled in optimizing mode
> the first time.
>
> Richard> I am a fan of Scheme and its functional syntax. Could a
> Richard> functional "front end" be written for Self? Not necessarily
> Richard> Scheme compatible, just "lisp-ish".
>
> I guess it could...just try it! :-)
>
> -Urs
>
> PS: We're actively working on both the space and the speed problems!
>
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