From: nadja@jetsun.weitek.COM (Nadja Adolf)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: comparing object-oriented platforms
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:10:51 GMT
Organization: WEITEK Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1atnlsINNjlt@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> ac690@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Edward Klimas) writes:

>In a previous article, nadja@jetsun.weitek.COM (Nadja Adolf) says:
>a lot of blatantly misinformed opinion including

>>In article <718144987snx@feki.toppoint.de> marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann) writes:
>>>nadja@jetsun.weitek.COM writes in article <1992Oct1.013812.2130@jetsun.weitek.COM>:
>>>
>	This is not the case if one can fit the virtual machine into the 
>	cache of a processor's architecture (e.g. 88000) in which case 
>	the interpreted virtual machine based Smalltalk system executes
>	faster than native code executing out of standard memory.  This is
>	from a real world existing real time Smalltalk system.

How nice. We can all buy a new architecture, too. :-)
This only works if you have carte blanche to replace inhouse and out
of house systems. Not likely in the real world.

>	Yes!  In the proceedings of the 1990 OOPSLA workshop on real-time
>	OOP one of the participants from a French defense contractor
>	recounted their experience where an ST-80 simulation was recoded
>	in C++ for speed and ended up running only 10% faster.  I just
>	completed a real time ST based video processing application where the
>	off the shelf C routines ended up being only 14% faster!  These
>	kinds of performance "improvements" are hardly worth the 3-5x
>	increase in development time when coding in C/C++ vs ST.
>	If one must optimize a routine in Smalltalk, most experienced
>	developers revert to native assembly code primitives because C
>	typically does not give the 10x performance improvement that
>	a developer will desire.

10% is very significant with large applications with continuous runs.

>>What applications don't use complex arithmetic functions? I have yet to
>>find a business app that didn't do a lot of calculations...

>>> In my view the most significant problem with C++ is, that now most of
>>>the C programmers think too fast, that they managed or understand the
>>>OOP principles. They use procedural concepts and mix them with
>>>OOP-concepts and I think, these guys will get lost in big projects.

I think that a strawman is being erected here. If you want to write FORTRAN,
you can write it in any language, including smalltalk. What I don't understand
is the religious conversion experience that some smalltalk programmers
have about their language. A 10% improvement sounds attractive from where
I sit. 


>>My experience has been the reverse. C++ people get the project done since
>>they design before they code; smalltalk people 'design on the fly', get
>>a demo up, and then have to redo everything several times to get a project.
>	Please read the literature (e.g. "Experiences with Smalltalk
>	on a Large Development Project" by Bran Selic The Smalltalk Report
>	Sept 92 ) where seasoned developers consistently report large project
>	experiences (18 people for 18 months) similiar to 2-3x C++ and 5x C 
>	productivity using Smalltalk.  This upcomming OOPSLA will have another
>	experience report on another large ST based real-time process control
>	system at Texas Instruments with >25 developers for over 20 months
>	with similiar documented results!  (Note: T.I. chose ST over its own
>	in-house COOL C Obj. Oriented Libraries because of a direct
>	comparison with what could be done with C++)

If this is the case, why are there no major commercial applications available
that are written in smalltalk? There is something wrong with this picture.

>>There seems to be a big myth out there that C++==C. :-) A myth heavily
>>believed in by people who don't use C++. How many big projects written
>>in smalltalk have actually 'gone out the door?' How many in C++?
>	With the major sales of C++ one would expect that to be the case
>	but as reported in "Smalltalk Looming Larger" by David Taylor
>	Object Magazine May/June 1992; 8 out of a sample of 18 applications
>	were built in Smalltalk, 3 were done in C++ and the rest were done 
>	in C++.

(Huh? 8 were done in small talk and (3 + (18-(3 + 8))) were done in C++?
this implies that 10 were done in C++. This is smalltalk looming larger?)
 
>	As Meiler Page Jones notes in "Object Orientation: the importance
>	of being earnest" Object Magazine July-August 92.  A lot of people
>	are using C++ because they perceive it to be the politically 
>	correct thing to do and continue to write C code in the same old way!

Politically correct? I suspect this is a case of one person who doesn't do
OO programming in C++ preaching to a crowd of other people who don't do OO
in C++. 

>>It depends on what sort of speed considerations you are speaking of. :-)
>	There are some exceptionally financially successfull companies
>	providing Smalltalk based solutions that cost a lot less, perform
>	faster, and are much more reliable than alternate technologies.

And a lot of the smalltalk based solutions seem to exist solely to bridge
C libraries. It looks to me like a lot of people don't recognize their
own tendency to not achieve their goals in the language of their choice.

>	I bet some of them will also be at OOPSLA with more concrete
>	examples!
>
>	Ed Klimas
>>
>>-- 
>>The Earth Pig Bourne....
>>
>>nadja@node.com (prefered email address)
>>nadja@weitek.com
>>


-- 
The Earth Pig Bourne....

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