Re: [Texmacs-dev] Cache profiling of TeXmacs 1.0.3.9

[skhilji]

----- Original Message -----
From: David Allouche <address@hidden>
Date: Saturday, May 22, 2004 3:43 am
Subject: Re: [Texmacs-dev] Cache profiling of TeXmacs 1.0.3.9

> actuallythey would not have happened in the first time if texmacs 
> had been
> written in C++ and not in a "scheme-c++ lookalike thing while 
> keeping an
> eye on mathemagix" of your own. Use the dialects of the programming
> language, or be doomed to eternal suffering.
> 


I agree with David here.  Going thru TeXmacs source code recently, I can bet 
$$$ on the fact that a C++ based approach would have avoided some of the 
performance problems----simply because the Scheme-like C++ is forcing us to do 
computations at runtime that otherwise would have happened at compile time.

And I am beginning to hate reference counting as well.  Every time we pass 
pointer around to functions, we are dong additional math (incrementing and 
decrementing the counts, calling ctors and dtors).  Refernece counting is not 
transparent either.  Several places in the code I see code like:

a[i] = copy(a[i]);

That is really confusing and almost impossible for a new programmer to 
understand.

Salman