Roger Eller wrote:
> I am fascinated by the benchmarking scripts you have devised, but
> if the destinations are the same, why in the world would someone
> purposefully choose the moped to get there, especially when the
> jet plane is available?
It's hard to find parking for a jet. :)
Mopeds, cars, trucks, and even bicycles have useful roles among
transportation options, each having its own strengths and weaknesses for
a given task. I prefer using my bicycle for any trip under 5 miles, and
frequently use it for 10 miles or more, but I wouldn't choose it when I
need to get from Pasadena to Boston (though I once met a 65-year-old
gentleman who did exactly that, but that's another story and he had lots
of time on his hands <g>).
There are times when passing by reference is a really good thing to do,
and times when it's not at all good idea, like if you need an altered
output but also need to keep the original intact.
Similarly, "repeat for each" is much faster than "repeat with", but if
you need to alter the chunk being parsed within the loop the former
won't let you do that, since it's able to achieve its speed only by
enforcing an assumption up front that the chunk won't change during the
loop.
And sometimes we need to put before, and sometimes put after, and while
it's conceivable the engine might be able to figure out our intentions
to reverse the operation internally to use the faster form, no doubt
there would be cases where it would guess wrong.
There are likely many ways the engine can be further optimized for
ever-greater efficiency, just as Raney took the time so long ago to
optimize the "put after" so that it no longer made a copy but did a
resize instead.
But we can also expect there will always be a need for us to decide
which algorithm best fits the problem at hand.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
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