From: Mark Davis (mark@macchiato.com)
Date: Mon Feb 23 2009 - 09:34:29 CST
Clearly it isn't a good ideal to lock up a machine when when it hits a rare
character; nobody's saying anything like that. The goal is acceptable
performance for everything, and optimized performance for the overwhelming
majority.
Mark
On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 03:56, David Starner <prosfilaes@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 1:46 AM, Mark Davis <mark@macchiato.com> wrote:
> > And that is bad, why? The fact code can be fast-pathed is typically a key
> > tool to achieving performance goals.
>
> [...]
>
> > Measuring inputs that match reality is vital for producing
> high-performance
> > code. Let's take an example. In ICU we routinely maximize for BMP
> > characters. While someone doing extensive work in cuneiform might be
> > somewhat slower, the code is faster for the vast majority of cases. So
> that
> > is the right way to code it.
>
> If and only if it's "somewhat slower" and not "oh my god why has my
> computer locked up". Algorithms with awful worst-case scenarios can be
> the cause for a very frustrating experience for users who aren't
> considered important by the programmer. And if the program is on a
> server, no matter how bad and unrealistic the data is, the program
> must be capable of processing it in a reasonable amount of time,
> because if not, someone will find it amusing to send it to the
> program, over and over.
>
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