Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!cwi.nl!guido From: guido@cwi.nl (Guido van Rossum) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: MPW and Think Message-ID: <3764@charon.cwi.nl> Date: 25 Jun 91 10:48:29 GMT References: <1991Jun23.014722.20288@gn.ecn.purdue.edu> Sender: news@cwi.nl Lines: 28 jess@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Jess M Holle) writes: >I have seen posts regarding the relative efficiency of MPW and Think >compilers several times recently, and it's gotten me curious. I know >that Think is a faster compiler, but I am VERY curious about the code >it produces as compared to MPW. > >Does anyone have any actual test code stats? I have one data point. I developed my Python programming language interpreter largely on my humble MacPlus with 1 Meg of memory using various versions of Think C (currently 4.0). Just to test the portability of the stuff I decided to compile with MPW 2.0 (the only version we have). Surprise, the resulting Python interpreter was actually SLOWER than the one compiled by Think C. I can't remember by how much but believe it was by about 10 or 20 percent. And MPW also compiled ten times slower, and wasn't able to compile one particularly large function (a switch with ~100 cases) in the given memory. And then the messy hacks needed to add segmentation to the code :-( I haven't tried to understand why MPW generated slower code; I suspect however that 4 byte integers (versus 2 byte ints in Think C) have something to do with it. I don't know if later versions of MPW are any better. --Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole"