From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general,gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Emacs Bazaar repository Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:01 +0100 Message-ID: <85y78l2sci.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> References: <87skyvse7k.fsf@xmission.com> <86ejae96t4.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz> <47DA3601.3040507@arbash-meinel.com> <47DA8D97.2030106@ableton.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1205511459 9350 80.91.229.12 (14 Mar 2008 16:17:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:17:39 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Andreas Schwab , Eli Zaretskii , emacs-devel@gnu.org, Matthieu Moy , bazaar@lists.canonical.com To: Nicholas Allen Original-X-From: bazaar-bounces@lists.canonical.com Fri Mar 14 17:18:06 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvbg-bazaar-ng@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from chlorine.canonical.com ([91.189.94.204]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1JaCbG-0005zZ-2F for gcvbg-bazaar-ng@m.gmane.org; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:42 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=chlorine.canonical.com) by chlorine.canonical.com with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JaCad-0006Y0-Bj; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:17:04 +0000 Original-Received: from mail-in-12.arcor-online.net ([151.189.21.52]) by chlorine.canonical.com with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JaCab-0006Xd-3Y for bazaar@lists.canonical.com; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:17:01 +0000 Original-Received: from mail-in-09-z2.arcor-online.net (mail-in-09-z2.arcor-online.net [151.189.8.21]) by mail-in-12.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 966864C475; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:00 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from mail-in-02.arcor-online.net (mail-in-02.arcor-online.net [151.189.21.42]) by mail-in-09-z2.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C40728EDF3; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:00 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from lola.goethe.zz (dslb-084-061-012-006.pools.arcor-ip.net [84.61.12.6]) by mail-in-02.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4D77B36E871; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:00 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: by lola.goethe.zz (Postfix, from userid 1002) id 153D91C4F906; Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:17:01 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <47DA8D97.2030106@ableton.com> (Nicholas Allen's message of "Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:37:11 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.60 (gnu/linux) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.92.1/6230/Fri Mar 14 15:23:10 2008 on mail-in-02.arcor-online.net X-Virus-Status: Clean X-BeenThere: bazaar@lists.canonical.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.8 Precedence: list List-Id: bazaar discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: bazaar-bounces@lists.canonical.com Errors-To: bazaar-bounces@lists.canonical.com Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.version-control.bazaar-ng.general:38596 gmane.emacs.devel:92581 Archived-At: Nicholas Allen writes: > Bazaar has the UI spot on I think - it just needs to perform better. I > have been using Bazaar since 0.8 and I can tell you the performance > improvements they have made so far are huge. They are still working on > performance and I'm sure they will fix this issue in the not too > distant future as they have a very good track record of doing so.... Reminds me of a job I once did in geodesy. The previous people working on the job (partly doctors of informatics) had done several iterations of optimizations on the code, halving its running time in the process, then squeezing off some more. Problem was that the data sets to be processed were expected to more than triple, and the stuff was already running a day or so. I tried working myself into the code (I always have a hard time understanding code of others, and one of the reasons I was put on the job was that the code was getting more fragile) and after about two weeks gave up. I just don't have the mental capacity to find myself comfortable around in a mess I did not create myself. So I just spent two days on thinking about an algorithm and optimizations and stuff and implemented it from scratch. Took probably another two weeks of coding and testing where it wasn't dumping core or running into loops or similar. And then I got stuck debugging it. The stuff just terminated after a few minutes of run time, and I was running out of ideas what was wrong. After about a day of placing breakpoints and looking at the data structures I was running out of ideas and turned to looking at the generated output. It was correct. Since that time I have a healthy dose of scepticism about people (and teams) tinkering with their algorithms and "coming through". The real metric is not how much you improve things, but where they should be in the first place. I am not implying that this is happening here. But if we are several orders of magnitude behind the competition, the proven ability of squeezing off some runtime at the cost of legibility (and thus also the viability of further optimizations without destabilization) is not a useful metric.