Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!mintaka!think.com!compass!worley From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: Byte-compile summary. Message-ID: Date: 18 Oct 90 13:39:25 GMT References: <1162@red15.qtp.ufl.edu> <13937@ists.ists.ca> Sender: root@compass.com Organization: Compass, Inc., Wakefield, MA, U.S.A. Lines: 26 In-reply-to: kim@Software.Mitel.com's message of 17 Oct 90 13:28:02 GMT In article kim@Software.Mitel.com (Kim Letkeman) writes: I can not remember ever saying to myself "geez, I wish that had been code more efficiently .... it's taking too many seconds." Try byte-compiling the Emacs lisp directory! :-) Seriously, Kim, if Emacs were always fast enough in practice, there'd be no need for a byte compiler at all. I've had days when C-n can take noticable time, and I've used packages that can be agonizingly slow even when the hardware is otherwise unloaded. One interesting thing about Sullivan Beck's list of ideas is that many of them are things the byte-compiler could do for you. Putting the optimizations in the byte-compiler saves a lot of work -- optimizing the bytecode is done only once, and the application programmers can spend their time on new features. Unfortunately, nobody has spent the time to upgrade the byte-compiler to squeeze out improved performance from the generated bytecode. Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com -- People mistakenly believe that computers have a lot to do with numbers, which is totally inaccurate. In fact, a large number of bluffers have gone into computers because there's no area in which it's easier to hide a complete inability to count, except perhaps mathematics. -- Bluff Your Way in Computers