Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!Teknowledge.COM!unix!garth!fouts@bozeman.ingr.com (Martin Fouts)
From: fouts@bozeman.ingr.com (Martin Fouts)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Speed costs (Re: MWC's Coherent - A Lemon...)
Message-ID: <403@garth.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jun 90 00:39:24 GMT
References: <2793@crash.cts.com> <265D2FE5.2513@tct.uucp> <640@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> <136298@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Sender: fouts@garth.UUCP
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
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In-reply-to: lm@snafu.Sun.COM's message of 27 May 90 19:04:17 GMT

In article <136298@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy) writes:

   From: lm@snafu.Sun.COM (Larry McVoy)

   In article <640@sibyl.eleceng.ua.OZ> ian@sibyl.OZ (Ian Dall) writes:
   >Not entirely. Sure it would be nice if all code was compact, but
   >achieving it isn't free. I too did my first serious programming on
   >PDP-11's (running RT-11 which left one with less the 64k (~45k ?) to
   >work in). I spent a *lot* of time shoe horning programs into limited
   >space. Younger programmers might not have the same skills in that
   >area, but they *don't need them*. We all have to get used to the fact
   >that memory is now about $80/MB and swap space is about $10/MB. By the
   >time the project you are working on is finished, these prices might
   >have halved. There is just no point in being too stingy with either!

   Yes there is.  It takes time to load that 5meg application.  Disk time,
   page fault time.  It takes cache lines, which are not plentiful.

   The fact that memory is, currently, cheap does not give us the right
   to squander it.  Last I checked a xclock was 1.3 megs.  Is this
   reasonable?

No.  On my system xclock is

-rwxrwxr-x   2 7362     sys       104696 May 21 16:25 /usr/bin/X11/xclock*

It will get smaller next month when I install the shared library
version of the X programming libraries.  (The resident image on my
current system is 500k, the full swap image including the shared
standard library entry points, etc is 600k.)

Ian Dall said there is no point in being ***too*** stingy with either.
(My emphasis) and I agree.  There is a real tradeoff between cost of
developement, cost of maintenance, lifetime and size.  Should I go bum
another 100 bytes out of xclock?  (200?) No.  If I care about clocks,
I should spend my time on an xclock variant with more neat features.
(Alarms, calendars, etc..)
--
Martin Fouts

 UUCP:  ...!pyramid!garth!fouts  ARPA:  apd!fouts@ingr.com
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If you can find an opinion in my posting, please let me know.
I don't have opinions, only misconceptions.