Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:25:16 +0100, Chris wrote: > "Nick Sabalausky": >> "Ph": >>> Why a generated file is so huge? [...] >> That's not even a third of a megabyte, why does this keep getting >> brought up as an issue by so many people? > > Execution speed perhaps, since the time elapsed is proportional to the > number of processor instruction executed. This explains why some people > (for certain time critical apps) do not even take the step from C to > C++, and chose to stay 20 year behind "modern" languages. > > D presented itself being a high level language suitable for system > programming, so executable sizes must be taken into consideration, imho. > > Year after year I see the sizes of overbloated executables to grow with > non-proportional added substance. I am totally shocked when for only to > add a reference to an external library, my program burn the space of an > entire computer of old good days. > > I simply can't get used to it, and probably never will for anyone who > used to code in low-level languages, since they know how much a program > size can really be.
What's funny is that more and more computation can be done with a single instruction because of SSE1-4.2/MMX. Also register sizes grow so computation does not need to be split into many registers because of overflow issues. Also CPUs get faster so a tighter algorithm with a bit slower performance could be used instead. Unfortunately computer programs seem to inflate over time. A typical program doubles its size in 2-3 years. I would understand this if a tradeoff was made between size and performance but unfortunately many programs also perform worse than before. There are exceptions such as the linux kernel - IIRC it fit in a 1.4MB floppy along with a basic set of userspace programs. Nowadays, 15 years later, my hand-built kernel is about 2.5 .. 3x larger. On the other hand it supports more hardware now. I used to have drivers for 4x read only cd, vesa video, sound blaster 16, iomega zip, floppy, and parallel printer. Nowadays I have 2-3 times as many devices connected to the PC and most of them are much more advanced - bi-directional printer link, dvd-rw etc.
