Hi Alex, On 28 April 2011 18:14, Alexandre Bergel <[email protected]> wrote: >> Or have a VM that is not Squeak, and perhaps use a language that is not used >> in the style Smalltalk is (7 lines of code per method, right?). > > Yes, but there hasn't been a major change on the VM front since I started > Smalltalk. Cog is the notable exception, but the assumption I made without > Cog remains valid with Cog.
do you mean "on the *Smalltalk* VM front"? I'm pretty sure you do. :-) > Most profilers, including MessageTally, count stack frames at a regular > interval. This is doomed to be inexact, non-deterministic and non-portable, > and so, whatever the effort you will put in the thread scheduling, memory > management or whatsoever. I think you're being a bit harsh on stack sampling there. It is exact enough to drive optimisation in some really high-performance VMs. It is also deterministic enough to yield data leading to very good performance results in those VMs. Whether focusing on counting messages instead of taking samples is more beneficial would have to be determined by experiment ... What you mean with "non-portable" I do not understand. > I am simply focusing on sending messages, which is in my opinion, the essence > of the OO executing model. Yup, good point. Best, Michael
