John P Baker writes:
My experience is that the assertion that reentrant programs ALWAYS perform
better than non-reentrant programs can not be justified. There are simply
too many variables involved.
This is, at best, a straw man, constructed to facilitate dismemberment.
The textbook proposition
There are no black swans.
has an empirical defect: real blank swans have been found to exist.
More important, it is in logic a universal negative; and it can be proved
that no instance of an universal negative can be proved.
The existence of some non-reentrant block of code that is faster than the
corresponding reentrant one is no argument for writing non-reentrant code.
In the light of the character of the defenses of doing so set out here after
my post, I must, however, conclude that this issue is for some an emotional
and not an intellectual one. So be it!
John Gilmore
Ashland, MA 01721-1817
USA
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