On Fri, 19 May 2000, Autarch wrote:
> Well, my point was that the decision to code something in C should be done
> because it offers an overwhelming (orders of magnitude) improvement,
> preferably on more than one front (speed, memory, ease of maintenance
> (haha) ).
small savings here and there can add up to big savings in the end. did
you look at the size of CGI::start_html? 16k. and that's a small
subroutine, these things add up quick.
> Really, if you feel that Perl is too memory hungry and slow for even
> simple text output, then why use Perl at all?
i never said that. i'm just trying to point out that it's worth
considering the savings.
> My bias is against C because I don't like it and I think it makes the
> module less accessible to people and therefore less likely to get improved
> by the community at large, and more likely to only get worked on by 1
> person.
personally, i like to have generic things written in c, things that won't
change much or at all after they are first implemented (not including bug
shaking). e.g. Apache::Request. both c and Perl are great languages and
blend very well together. both have pros and cons, i try to use the
right combo of both to balance these out. c is smaller. c is faster.
Perl is much easier to code than c, so i like to save it for things that
are difficult to code. generating html is not difficult. is it really
worth the time to implement this in c? i'm not convinced yet either, but
it is worth thinking about. we need to consider these things if we want
to see the Apache/Perl combo improve as a development platform.
think big picture.
