Re: C++ vs Java "new" (no flame war please!)

Is there a way to create 10 to 100 million objects in Java with a
reasonable system configuration?

Mark Rafn wrote:
Any VM since 1.4 on modern hardware should not have a problem with this,
unless you're pretty time-sensitive.

mlw <mlw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
To address the "time-sensitive" comment, many times I hear that the machines
are fast enough that you don't need to worry about performance,

I don't think I'd ever say that. I will say that machines are fast and cheap
enough that for a whole lot of uses you can optimize for clarity,
maintainability, and developer time over every last cycle of performance.
It's definitely still a tradeoff, just one that's shifted quite a ways.

I have to say this is the same argument for the 4 day work week. "Soon,
we'll be productive enough that we'll only have to work 4 days a week."

I'm productive enough to earn far more than 125% of what I did a few years
ago. No myth here.

If you make a program that takes an hour to do something, and someone comes
along and writes one that takes 5 minutes, you lose, no matter what the
program is written in.

Depends on the program. I have programs that run for an hour each day, that
could probably be cut down to 30 minutes (the difference would be changes in
DB usage and transactional consistency, not just reimplement in a different
language), but I have better things to worry about.

The VAST majority of programs aren't 12:1 difference. If you write a program
that takes 11 seconds to do something, and someone comes along and writes one
that does it in 10.6, but only on some platforms and in a hard-to-maintain
way, I think they lose.
--
Mark Rafn dagon@xxxxxxxxx <http://www.dagon.net/>
.