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From: jerry@polygen.uucp (Jerry Shekhel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: HLLs vs. Assembly
Message-ID: <1040@stewart.UUCP>
Date: 9 Apr 91 21:17:45 GMT
References: <13156@ucrmath.ucr.edu> <1991Mar30.080418.16299@ee.ualberta.ca> <1029@stewart.UUCP> <13345@ucrmath.ucr.edu>
Reply-To: jerry@stewart.UUCP (Jerry Shekhel)
Organization: Polygen Corporation, Waltham, MA
Lines: 25

In article <13345@ucrmath.ucr.edu> rhyde@ucrmath.ucr.edu (randy hyde) writes:
>
>As for the Graphical User Interface- No way is this easier to write in
>assembly than in C.  But there is an obvious performance benefit to having
>this written in assembly.  X-Window is a good example of what happens when
>you try to write such code in C.  It's wonderful that X is portable, but
>you need a H**L of a machine  run in reasonably well.
> 

If you think that X-Window's slowness is due to it having been written in C,
you are sadly mistaken.  The reason it's slow is that it has to convert each
call to a network packet, and send it over the network (or socket).  The
server on the other end, then receives the packet, converts it back to a
request, and finally does the requested processing.  When this whole process
has to be repeated for EVERY SINGLE call, no wonder it's slow.  The fact that
the software is written in C has zero performance implications here.
--
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| JERRY J. SHEKHEL  | POLYGEN CORPORATION  | When I was young, I had to walk |
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