On Jul 7, 2009, at 8:50 PM, Geoffrey Garen wrote:
I also don't buy your conclusion -- that if regular expressions
account for 1% of JavaScript time on the Internet overall, they
need not be optimized.
I never said that.
You said the regular expression test was "most likely... the least
relevant test" in SunSpider.
You said implementors' choice to optimize regular expressions
because they were hot on SunSpider was "not what we want to
encourage."
But maybe I misunderstood you. Do you think it was a good thing that
SunSpider encouraged optimization of regular expressions? If so, do
you think the same thing would have happened had SunSpider not used
summation in calculating its scores?
I suspect this line of questioning will not result in effective
persuasion or useful information transfer. It comes off as kind of a
gotcha question.
My understanding of Mike's position is this:
- The slowest test on the benchmark will become a focus of
optimization regardless of scoring method (thus, I assume he does not
really think regexp optimization efforts are an utter waste.)
- During the period when JS engines had most things much faster than
the state of things when SunSpider first came out, but hadn't yet
extensively optimized regexps, the test gave a misleading and
potentially unfair picture of overall performance. And this is a
condition that could happen again in the future.
I think this is a plausible position, but I don't entirely buy these
arguments, and I don't think they outweigh the reasons we chose to use
summation scoring. I think it's ultimately a judgment call, and unless
we have new information to present, we don't need to drag out the
conversation or call each to account on details of supporting arguments.
Regards,
Maciej
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