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Re: OT: Why is C so popular?



On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 10:55:41 -0500
Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 04:06, Alfredo Valles wrote:
> > And very very slow too, like any other script language.
 
> One thing I learned a *long* time ago is that even an 80286 is faster
> than people typing, reading the screen, moving the mouse, getting a 
> cup of coffee, etc.

    I've got to agree there.  I recall doing word processing on my Tandy
1000HX and wonder why the hell Word needs 40Mb just to start up.  

    As for Python being "very, very slow" compared to C I'd like to know who
Alfredo can define something as "very, very slow" compared to something else
when in most cases the difference would be measured in ms.  Lemme give a
simple example.

    I recently installed sa-exim.  As a result I've got this large corpus of
unlearned spam sitting in several directories.  I want to sort through it and
send it to ham or spam of sa-learn.  After trying to do it with the CLI I gave
up and decided to write a Python app to do it.  Enter Saeman (bad, I know).

    Saeman is written in Python using wxPython as the base and constructed
with Boa-Constructor.  wxPython is mainly a Python wrapper around the
wxWindows libs (or so I have been told) which, in turn, uses GTK 1.x.  I'm
running it on a PIII-450 sitting in the closet using TightVNC to export the
display to a old IBM Thinkpad that has a PII-200 in it.  

    So let me be clear on this.  I am using a "very, very slow" scripting
language on a "very, very slow" (by today's standards) machine exporting it
across a "very, very slow" link that is VNC to display it on a "very, very....
very... uh... very slow" laptop.  Even with all that inefficiency built into
how I get the work done the application, simplistic as it is, is just as fast,
to me, as any C application running over the same link (like Sylpheed-Claws
here) or indeed any locally run application on the Win2k box VNC is running
on.  If that's "very, very slow" I'm perfectly content with that.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
       PGP Key: 8B6E99C5       | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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