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Re: Managed-Code Bloat

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On 06/06/2011 01:04 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
> Maybe that’s the point: such skills are less common among corporate types.
>

Not per se. I have programmed in C since 1985 and took up C++ when the 
cfront thingy became available on our (university) PDP-11 and Sun UNIX 
machines a year later. I dare to say that I am quite capable of writing 
high quality code in C/C++.

BUT, when writing large multi-threaded systems I experienced that the 
effort needed to keep everything working correctly typically grew at a 
more-than-linear rate in relation to code base size.

Using C++ I created a ref<T> templated type that exposed T* like 
semantics but implemented reference counting to simplify memory 
management of objects that where shared in such a way that it was 
difficult to determine who should control their lifespan.
Although that worked fine it was very easy to get bitten by reference 
cycles so it only solved part of the problem. The extra memory 
allocation/deallocation needed per object and the negative impact it had 
on code inlining did not help performance either.

Being pragmatic I decided to switch to Java for specific projects even 
though I had rejected it earlier as being a "fake" language with 
inferior performance characteristics.
Soon I discovered that the portion of effort needed for correct explicit 
memory management (and tracing bugs caused by the lack thereof) in C/C++ 
was so large that development times dropped drastically by using Java. 
Very soon I was convinced that only a very small part of the systems I 
wrote actually justified opting for C/C++.

A few years ago I switched to Scala. Although it runs on the same JVM 
that Java uses a similar return on investment was my reward. The reasons 
for this are very different though.

>
> And yet most mass-market apps avoid them.

That was true a couple of years ago when hand-held devices where only 
just capable of doing fancy stuff. Native code was required to squeeze 
out that last x% of performance. (Which will work for such mostly small 
applications)
The early Android phones suffered from the lack of high-performing 
devices and delivered poor performance. That problem has been solved 
since then as I have experienced with my last two Android phones for 
almost two years.

Silvio

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Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-06 18:47 +1200
  Re: Managed-Code Bloat Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-06 06:40 -0300
    Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-06 23:04 +1200
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-06 17:41 -0300
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 11:13 +1200
          Re: Managed-Code Bloat Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-07 07:08 -0300
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Silvio <silvio@moc.com> - 2011-06-07 09:40 +0200
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2011-06-07 06:08 -0700
  Re: Managed-Code Bloat Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-06-06 11:35 -0400
    Re: Managed-Code Bloat Alessio Stalla <alessiostalla@gmail.com> - 2011-06-06 10:47 -0700
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-06-06 18:21 +0000
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> - 2011-06-08 11:48 -0400
          Re: Managed-Code Bloat Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2011-06-08 18:06 +0000
            Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> - 2011-06-11 14:00 -0400
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 10:18 +1200
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> - 2011-06-08 11:59 -0400
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> - 2011-06-08 11:22 -0400
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat rossum <rossum48@coldmail.com> - 2011-06-08 21:45 +0100
    Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 10:17 +1200
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-06-06 16:37 -0700
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 12:06 +1200
          Re: Managed-Code Bloat Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-06-06 17:44 -0700
            Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 13:38 +1200
              Re: Managed-Code Bloat Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-06-06 20:13 -0700
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 15:41 +1200
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2011-06-06 20:47 -0700
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 01:06 -0700
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 23:53 +1200
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 16:04 -0700
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michael Wojcik <mwojcik@newsguy.com> - 2011-06-08 13:04 -0400
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat Michal Kleczek <kleku75@gmail.com> - 2011-06-08 09:23 +0200
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-08 03:54 -0700
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat bugbear <bugbear@trim_papermule.co.uk_trim> - 2011-06-07 10:10 +0100
                Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 00:37 -0700
      Re: Managed-Code Bloat Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-07 07:31 -0300
        Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-07 16:18 -0700
          Re: Managed-Code Bloat Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-07 20:50 -0300
          Re: Managed-Code Bloat Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-06-08 07:53 -0700
            Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-08 11:23 -0700
    Re: Managed-Code Bloat BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2011-06-06 16:54 -0700
  Re: Managed-Code Bloat Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2011-06-06 19:24 -0700
    Re: Managed-Code Bloat Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.new_zealand> - 2011-06-07 15:44 +1200

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