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> -----Original Message-----
> From: blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy> Behalf Of Martin, Marc
>
> should look like. GPCP and .NET address my framework and
> look & feel concerns, but I had so many other issues with
> this that I have just stuck with Blackbox. For those of you
> who are interested, my issues with GPCP were that the users
> need to have .NET installed on their computer,
Yes, this is a hindrance and is the main reason why I am currently sticking
to Win32 applications for mass distribution. However, it is a relatively
short-term problem as .NET is currently being pre-installed on many new PCs
and is likely to be included as a standard part of the Windows operating
system very soon - maybe with Windows Vista.
One of the advantages of .NET is that the resulting exe files are about
1/10th the size of corresponding Win32 (e.g. freestanding Delphi or
BlackBox) executables. However, this is negated if the end-user then has to
download the 20Mb .NET framework. However, with the proliferation of
broadband Internet access, this is not as much of a deterrent as it used to
be. I recently installed a new Windows XP computer, and the first thing it
did when I connected to the Internet was download 40Mb of Operating System
updates!
> The startup of
> my .NET apps took a long time (8 seconds on my old 1Ghz
> computer)
Something is very wrong there. I just did a test on my old 1Ghz, 384Mb RAM
computer and my GPCP Pascal to Oberon translator took less than 2 seconds to
translate a 4000 line Pascal program into Oberon. Have you retried the tests
since .NET v2.0 was released last year?
Another test involved a program that loads in the details of 70,000 DVDs
from a CSV text file and displays them in a grid with 13 columns (Title,
price, rating, year, aspect ratio etc. etc). It took 18 seconds. However, in
that time it has to convert them into some form of internal database format,
as once the data has been loaded, it only takes a second or so to sort the
grid by any column or to display just a subset of rows based on the contents
of any cell.
The first time to load a .NET program will be slower than subsequent times
during that session as it is compiling it as it loads it e.g. the second
time I ran the DVD List program it took 30% less time to start. If this
startup compilation overhead does pose a problem it is possible to use the
.NET NGEN tool to pre-compile it.
I'm not saying that it isn't possible to write inefficient code. It's the
same with any system - you have to understand how the framework works to get
the best out of it. As an example, one program I was working on ran quickly
with a sample set of data, but when I ran it on the full set of data it took
about a minute to start. If I hadn't known any better I might have accepted
that. However, I knew something had to be wrong. Just changing a single
parameter of a function resulted in a 30x speedup and startup now takes a
couple of seconds!
> , the compile/link/make process seemed rather
> old-fashioned (back to command-line compilers),
I don't understand this comment. There is no 'link' process, and you only
have to use 'compile' in unusual circumstances. Actually, I've often
wondered why a 'make' is missing from BlackBox. It is particularly useful
when working with Oberon / Component Pascal code, as all of the dependencies
are contained in the source code - there is no need for a separate 'project'
or 'make' file. In GPCP all you have to do is 'make' the main module and it
will automatically recompile all dependent modules (but only if they really
need recompiling). Add a new module later? No problem - it automatically
looks after itself. I recall that ETH Oberon does have a similar facility
(called System Builder or something like that?)
> the result of
> SYSTEM.ADR() is not guaranteed to be a constant during your
> code's execution,
Granted. .NET is not suitable for writing potentially unsafe code.
> and linking to existing Fortran DLLs is not
> supported.
There is at least one Fortran.NET compiler in existence but I don't know how
langauge-compatible they are with Win32 Fortrans. One of the major
advantages of .NET is that .NET dlls can usually be readily intermingled no
matter what the source language is. When visually debugging a mixed-language
application, the debugger automatically switches to the source code of the
module that you are in.
> Plus when I was porting code over for testing I
> was finding a new compiler bug almost every day -- not very
> encouraging, although I suspect that all of those bugs are
> now fixed (since I reported them all)
>
Apart from the ones I reported ;-) John Gough has been amazingly responsive
to bug reports - my problems have usually been addressed in one or two days,
even at weekends. I would have agreed with you a year or so ago but now
v1.3.3 of the compiler is very robust. I recommend that you give it another
look.
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
http://www.cfbsoftware.com/gpcp
--- BlackBox
--- send subject HELP or UNSUBSCRIBE to blackbox{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Tue May 23 2006 - 04:40:52 UTC