[linux-audio-dev] [ot] [rant] gcc, you let me down one time too many

[Fred Gleason]

On Monday 06 June 2005 00:53, Dave Robillard wrote:
> >     Good answer.  I've often wondered why anyone would use vectors.
>
> Because they dynamically resize, easily, and are generally much simpler
> to work with, perhaps? :)

Not to mention being more-or-less fully debugged and stable.

I think it's important to preserve some balance here.  While absolute speed is 
important, there are times when it can be a perfectly valid design decision 
to subordinate speed to other goal (such as design flexibility, 
maintainability or even [gasp!] speed of development).  Will it really make 
that much difference if a constructor that runs once at application startup 
takes 0.75 instead of 0.20 sec to complete?

Of course, there are also situations where it's absolutely right and necessary 
to optimize for every ounce of speed possible.  The point is that it really 
depends upon the specific situation and design -- to say that 'so-and-so 
technique is *always* better' is naive.  This is why profiling your code is 
important -- it highlights spots where the 'spit-n-shine' routine will do the 
most good.

Cheers!


|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. | Director of Broadcast Software Development  |
|                           |             Salem Radio Labs                |
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|    Optimization is fifteen percent science and eighty-five percent      |
|    black magic.                                                         |
|                                         -- Linux Torvalds               |
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