[REBOL] Re: order of evaluating expressions..
From: greggirwin::mindspring::com at: 24-Dec-2004 9:59
Hi Romano,
>>Is it really a significant slow down?
>>
RPT> Yes.
OTOH, premature optimization is one of the primary evils in software
development (IMO). APPEND, and other functions, are there for a
reason: usability.
That said, I do have some places in my code where using a more
efficient syntax has made a BIG difference in execution speed.
Sometimes those places are obvious (inner loops), but sometimes
they aren't (PARSE rules).
So, most of the time you probably don't have to worry about it, but
people absolutely do need to be aware of what is expensive and know
how to fix things if they do have speed issues. It would be great to
collect these things in a document. If people want to send their
optimizations to me I'll do the organization and collection. We should
come up with a good format for entries before they start rolling in
though. Anyone else think that's a worthwhile idea?
Now, what else can we do? Hmmmmm, REBOL is really good at parsing...
what if we wrote an analyzer that looked for speed-killing syntax in
scripts? It could start out very simple, looking for things like TO-*
calls, APPEND in loops, FOR, etc. If people have tricky scripts, we'll
worry about that later. :)
-- Gregg
