131–140 of 243 posts
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Well, if it didn't, they could optimize the compiler by removing those optimizations. :)
That was(is?) the benchmark for gcc optimizations: it has to pay for itself on the compiler: if the resulting compiler code is faster but the added compilation time is even greater, it s not worth it.
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Does that hurt performance of the output?
Well, if it didn't, they could optimize the compiler by removing those optimizations. :)
For instance, I imagine the x86_64 register allocation does some variant on graph coloring for register allocation, with an additional pass to assign lettered registers (rax, rbx, etc.) to the most heavily used registers, since using higher numbered registers requires a REX prefix byte. In addition, many instructions have more compact encodings when eax/rax is the destination register. At a minimum, excess REX prefixes take up instruction cache space. There's no parallel for aarch64, so there's no sense in implementing logic to try and make sure the low-numbered aarch64 registers are used more. (Though, on 32-bit ARM with Thumb/Thumb2, only a subset of registers are available, so there is a similar optimization for 32-bit ARM targets that support Thumb/Thumb2 when optimizing for space.)
I imagine there are better examples, but my point is that some optimizations are useless on some architectures.
Maybe this works for the language that the author is talking about, but in the cases that I'm familiar with, the standard library code does not give a good idea of what "normal" application code looks like. For example it's often got a bunch of platform-specific logic or low level optimizations that, as an application author, you probably want the standard lib to abstract away from you
I had a friend who said he enjoyed reading the PickAxe Book ("Programming Ruby") from end to end each year . That includes the whole Ruby stdlib!
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Why is that wrong? A language can be multi-paradigm while the “official” documents are written in a specific style. Like human languages, they evolve with their use (or fork into another language completely), while the high literature is the last one to change. Together with that, I agree that one should read the high literature before inventing a new writing style.
> read the high literature The elite language in Rome was Greek.
gee, they didn't have go?
Sure that empire was doomed.
Yes, but also no.
The standard library is often more complex and uses more advanced features then you often need for most projects. I.e. collections in std are supper general purpose, but if you need to write a collection it's normally specific to the purpose you need it for.
I.e. std is the "most" general purpose library you normally find so even if it's written with "KISS" in mind it's still often not so simple.
Then it sometimes uses unstable language features you normally can't use (as it's often made "in sync" with the language) and/or optimizations which in most other cases would count as "pre-mature" optimizations.
Through without a question you can learn a lot there, you just should be aware of the points above.
> To learn a new language, read its standard libraryTo learn a new language, read its standard library Yes, but also no. The standard library is often more complex and uses more advanced features then you often need for most projects. I.e. collections in std are supper general purpose, but if you need to write a collection it's normally specific to the purpose you need it for. I.e. std is the "most" general purpose l…
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It's just a little bit more work to write a non-trivial program in Go than in a scripting language such as Python, so if you need/want the good tooling and you need/want the significant speed improvement, it could be a good choice.
Go doesn’t have the libraries of python however. In certain computing domains you would first have to spend 10 years rewriting the python frameworks in golang before you could even be on parity with python. I am most familiar with scientific computing and GIS applications — python is miles ahead of golang in ecosystem support in those domains.