On 2015-02-27 16:45, alister wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 2015 03:12:16 +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 3:00 AM, alister
<alister.nospam.w...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
I think there is a case for bringing back the overlay file, or at least
loading larger programs in sections only loading the routines as they
are required could speed up the start time of many large applications.
examples libre office, I rarely need the mail merge function, the word
count and may other features that could be added into the running
application on demand rather than all at once.
Downside of that is twofold: firstly the complexity that I already
mentioned, and secondly you pay the startup cost on first usage. So you
might get into the program a bit faster, but as soon as you go to any
feature you didn't already hit this session, the program pauses for a
bit and loads it. Sometimes startup cost is the best time to do this
sort of thing.
If the modules are small enough this may not be noticeable but yes I do
accept there may be delays on first usage.
I suppose you could load the basic parts first so that the user can
start working, and then load the additional features in the background.
As to the complexity it has been my observation that as the memory
footprint available to programmers has increase they have become less &
less skilled at writing code.
of course my time as a professional programmer was over 20 years ago on 8
bit micro controllers with 8k of ROM (eventually, original I only had 2k
to play with) & 128 Bytes (yes bytes!) of RAM so I am very out of date.
I now play with python because it is so much less demanding of me which
probably makes me just a guilty :-)
Of course, there is an easy way to implement exactly what you're asking
for: use separate programs for everything, instead of expecting a
megantic office suite[1] to do everything for you. Just get yourself a
nice simple text editor, then invoke other programs - maybe from a
terminal, or maybe from within the editor - to do the rest of the work.
A simple disk cache will mean that previously-used programs start up
quickly.
Libre office was sighted as just one example
Video editing suites are another that could be used as an example
(perhaps more so, does the rendering engine need to be loaded until you
start generating the output? a small delay here would be insignificant)
ChrisA
[1] It's slightly less bloated than the gigantic office suite sold by a
top-end software company.
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