I forgot to mention that Pharo Zinc with all those primitives produces an HTTP data transfer rate (CSV data) twice as fast as VW’s HTTP client. I tested it many times. Pharo HTTP (Zinc) is consistently 2x faster than VW HTTP. This is probably more about the judicious use of primitives than the execution engine, JIT, or MM.
This is another good reason to do a port. Also, Pharo’s WebSocket implementation works very well, and is a standalone Smalltalk client. No such thing exists in VW. It’s all JS, which has been a source of frustration, and is another good reason to port. Shaping Hi Eliot. Generally, comparing VisualWorks to either Squeak or Pharo or both, what are the most pressing speed problems? 1. Double-click text selection in both Squeak and Pharo shows a 75-100 ms latency (eye-balled, estimated) between end of double click (button up on second click) and time of highlighting of selected text. It could be as low as 60 ms, but I doubt it, and that’s still too long. I can’t track the latency in VW 8.3.2. It’s too short, probably 30 ms or less, and is under my noise floor. Notepad latencies are even lower. The difference between VW and Notepad is not enough to complain about. Neither is noticeable in passing. The difference between VW and Pharo/Squeak latencies is a little painful/distracting. It’s very much in your face, and you are keenly aware that you are waiting for something to happen before you can resume your thoughts about the code. 2. Stepping in the Pharo debugger is slow (Squeak is fine). The latencies between the step-click event and selection of the next evaluable is a solid 100 ms (again estimated). Feels more like 150-175 ms much of the time. This is actually hard to work with. Where is VisualWorks significantly faster than either Squeak or Pharo? VW 8.3.2 faster: 1. Text selection. 2. Repeat-key rate in VW is smoother (not perfect; I see a few pauses). Pharos repeat-key rate is the same or a little slower, there are more pauses, and distribution of those pause-times is slightly wider for Pharo 9, as if event flow isn’t as smooth as it could be (because text/cursor rendering is a not efficient?). This is a minor issue, not a practical problem. I did the test in a workspace in both cases. Pharo 9 same or faster: Everything else in the GUI, like window openings/closings, menu openings/closings work at nearly the same speed, or Pharo 9 is faster. Opening a system browser in VW 8.3.2 and Pharo 9 takes about the same time. If you scrutinize, you can see that Pharo system browser open times are often about 2/3 to 4/5 of the VW times. This action is never faster in VW. Popup menus in Pharo 9 are noticeably faster than those in VW 8.3.2. Instant--delightful. Specifically which VisualWorks VM or lower level facilities are much faster than the Cog VM? Do you have benchmarks? No, I don’t, but I find subject interesting, and would like to pursue it. I’m trying to get some pressing work done in VW (as I contemplate jumping ship to Pharo/Squeak). It’s not a good time for excursions, but here I am playing with Squeak/Pharo, anyway. I want to dig deeper at some future date. Do you have a specific procedure you like to use when benchmarking the VW VM? Shaping
