[PD] Findings regarding performance

[Mathieu Bouchard]

Le 2011-12-01 à 17:37:00, Roman Haefeli a écrit :

> My question ("Is there something more efficient to turn signals on and
> off than [*~]?") and the things you replied triggered me to do those
> performance tests. Somehow it is easier for me to deal with stuff that I
> empirically experience than with written words in IRC where I am not
> always sure, if I understand the full depth of their meaning.
[...]
> Anyway, the fact that you're explaining stuff is not a reason for me to
> not to make some tests.

You are right about wanting to test things. And I do, too. It's important 
to verify the theory by experience. Some theory is harder to verify 
though, and in lots of cases, the experience is complicated by lots of 
other factors that you can't really separate from the thing you're trying 
to test. Still, it's good to make those experiences, to learn intuition in 
a way that theory can't do, and to make sure that all those books are not 
telling you bullshit. :)

Btw, if you try your tests on quite different computers (current 
cellphones, or very old computers) you may get quite different results, 
e.g. [switch~] could be much faster than any [*~]. This can be because 
float multiplication gets done in many small separate steps (instead of a 
few big steps) which can get a lot longer than just copying memory.

  ______________________________________________________________________
| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC