Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dtgcube!ed
From: ed@DTG.COM (Edward Jung)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Is the NeXT Slow?
Message-ID: <1989Dec3.190224.5255@uunet!dtgcube>
Date: 3 Dec 89 19:02:24 GMT
References: <770002@hpvcfs1.HP.COM> <129@kgw2.UUCP>
Sender: ed@uunet!dtgcube (Edward Jung)
Reply-To: ed@DTG.COM (Edward Jung)
Organization: The Deep Thought Group, L.P.
Lines: 32
In-Reply-To: dennisg@kgw2.UUCP (Dennis Glatting)

In article <129@kgw2.UUCP>, dennisg@kgw2 (Dennis Glatting) writes:
>
>the launch of applications that were written in Objective-C IS slow.  this
>is because O-C has to dearchive its objects from disk.  O-C isn't the most
>efficient language i've seen.  i have seen worse.  but that's the problem.
>if you use sed, awk, grep and sh/csh things like that you'll not think
>it's slow.
>

Launching of Objective-C applications is slow.  Interface Builder
takes time to set up objects from its control file, but more
importantly, the entire Objective-C-style class run-time structure
must be created.  This requires initialization messaging, management
of the hierarchy, etc.  Contrast this with certain other hybrid object
languages where some of this is pushed to compile time.  Objective-C's
way of doing it offers some additional flexibility (like the ability
to change classes and hierarchy on the fly, and for other languages to
use the same run-time class system).

As of 1.0, the initialization messaging is performed lazily; classes
(and their superclasses) are initialized when called.  Previously all
classes were sent initialization messages at the start of the
application.  Of course you can still depend on superclass
initialization to occur before subclass initialization.

Sacrificing the run-time system, however, would cause the loss of many
of the "neat" features of the Cube.
-- 
Edward Jung                             The Deep Thought Group, L.P.
BIX: ejung                                      3400 Swede Hill Road
NeXT or UNIX mail                                Clinton, WA.  98236
        UUCP: uunet!dtgcube!ed          Internet: ed@dtg.com