Bloat costs

[J.T. Conklin]

In article <2662D045.3F02 at tct.uucp> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>Substitute "four megabytes of RAM" for "COBOL", however,
>and you get a depressingly accurate summary of the attitude
>of the day.  Am I implying that that 4M-or-die programmers
>are trogolodytes as well?  You bet your data space I am.

Although I agree with Chip in general, there are some cases where
using memory is better than scrimping on principle.

I'm sure that many faster algorithms had to be passed by because
of limited address space.  Some of the GNU equivelents of UNIX
programs are many times faster because of the faster, yet more
memory intensive, algorithms.

I don't think I have to mention another optimization that ``wastes''
memory: large lookup tables.  It was quite common to be required to
re-compute indexes each iteration because there wasn't enough memory.

Another unrelated application is high resolution image processing.  Is
procesing 16MB frame-buffer with kerjillions of processors doing ray-
tracing wasting mmoryy?


On the other hand, there is something to be said about giving
beginning programmers 6 MHz Xenix/286 machines to work on.  I
think you'd be suprised at the small, fast, and portable code
that can come out of that enviornment.  I recomend it, as the
good habits that result will last for life.


To summarize, I have written programs that need 4M to run --- only
because it takes 4M to do the job.  Programs that require less, take
less. I do not consider myself a trogolodyte.

	--jtc

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J.T. Conklin	UniFax Communications Inc.
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