Cameron Laird Quote on www.unixinsider.com -- Probably old news to y'all, but new to me.

[Alex Martelli]

"Neil Hodgson" <neilh at scintilla.org> wrote in message
news:pkZs6.8451$992.49916 at news-server.bigpond.net.au...
    [snip]
>    C compilation time is also close to zero for much code now. For

...but not for large programs, unless a LOT of care has been
taken in dependency management when splitting them up
into very carefully separated components.  In my experience,
such painstaking care is hardly ever exercized with total success.

And then, of course, you're hosed anyway when you need to
change a iota in a low-level headerfile and 'recompile the
world' (advanced dependency-checkers that purport to NOT
do so, by basing dependency on finer grain than files, are not
reliable today in my experience -- they end up making things
worse, not better -- but I'll admit I haven't tried IBM's
VisualAge C++ in that regard).


>    Modern C++ that uses the standard C++ library and so requires a lot of
> template expansion may slow down compilation to half a second but that is
> still quite competitive with Python.

That depends on the compiler and build-system; we've had
several recent reports on this group of (gcc?) users very happy
with Boost Python _except_ for the little detail that compilation
of a very simple component can take several minutes and over
100 MB of memory (I don't see that problem with Microsoft VC++,
but it has other issues, such as a notoriously unreliable dependency
manager -- I've lost track of the times one gives up and hits
'rebuild all' because the incremental only-at-need builds are
not working...).


>    This is one benefit of the 'scripting languages' that is rapidly
> disappearing as machines get faster and C++ compilers are optimised.

I just wish it was this way -- since my mostly-Python apps will just
about always have SOME lower-level for-speed component (and I
far prefer to code those in C++ rather than in C).  Unfortunately,
while the trend is indeed as you mention, the progress along that
street is slower than the growth of program size and program use
of templates & such...!-)


Alex