Re: [OT] On `ad hominem' - OS X users

[A complimentary Cc of this posting was sent to
Sherm Pendley
<spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxx>], who wrote in article <m1myhybhat.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
This question is orthogonal to geekiness: the C-only build is
functionally identical, only slower...

Well, my only use for it is to satisfy dependencies for other modules
that use it - IIRC, there are SSH and GPG modules that use it during
key generation, and I couldn't care less if that takes 45 seconds
instead of 30.

I do not know details, but I thought it is used during communication
(too?). At least I saw people reported sslockets unusable without
Math::Something...

Anyway, I'm suspicious of the idea that the asm build is significantly
faster. Compilers have gotten a lot smarter, and CPUs a lot more
complex since the days of counting instruction cycles and optimizing
register use.

Obviously, you do not know how assembler is used in multiprecision
arithmetic... Hint: your processor has 10x number of instructions
than those generated by C compilers...

BTW: I'm very suspicious of your report of all tests passing... Did
not you just tested 2.1.7? (It's behaviour on OS X is well-understood
[although you still managed to highlight several new facets ;-]; the
discussion was about 3.3.4 - which requires patches I mentioned in my
initial reply of this thread...)

Thanks again,
Ilya
.

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