so the next time someone says something like that to you, ask if they're willing to run a debug build of Chrome or Firefox or whatever. most people would not be willing to do this.
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Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
and in fact I encourage you to experiment with this: run a browser compiled at -O0. run "ls" and "cd" compiled at -O0. discover for yourself when optimization matters and when it doesn't.
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Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
but again, for the vast majority of programs on your machine, your interviewer was totally correct: optimization just doesn't matter much. for a minority of important programs, it really does matter.
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Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
anyway the important thing, in my view, is not to get emotionally attached to optimization. I mean, it is super fun stuff and I also love it. but our views about its importance should be based on actual experience with programs, not on emotional attachment.
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Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
hey
@chandlerc1024, ya got three minutes to read through this thread and weigh in?3 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
Complex subject. I disagree with your claim that "for the vast majority of programs" optimizations don't matter much. Even your examples don't seem right to me -- shells routinely optimize the overhead of `ls`. Even for interpreters -- essentially all do *some* optz...
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Replying to @chandlerc1024 @jubitaneja
I shall hack your machine and drop in an unoptimized ls and you'll never notice, man
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(whispering) maybe I already did it -- better disassemble to make sure
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Replying to @johnregehr @jubitaneja
You act like I don't end up timing and profiling this kind of nonsense more often than I would like thanks to shell scripts.... But maybe we are talking across purposes....
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Replying to @chandlerc1024 @jubitaneja
I'm not really arguing with you but I do sincerely believe that 90% of the time, the perf of 90% of the binaries on an end-user machine doesn't matter
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How much of that is that is because the programs that you're thinking of don't do much themselves? Maybe wouldn't notice if ls weren't optimized, but more would notice if ls' libc (for printing output), the terminal (displaying the output), the kernel (fs interaction) weren't.
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yeah totally
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