To force caching on all users is a premature optimization, which is an evil step.

I disagree. First, I disagree that just because perl could cache the compiled bytecode that it must do so for everyone. There could be a commandline arg, or maybe a pragma ("use cachedbytecode;") which would enable it. Of course, if there is no downside to the caching (it's smart enough to deal with non-writable filesystems in a reasonable, unobtrusive manner, i.e., disable bytecode caching automatically), then I see no reason not to enable it by default.

Second, I disagree that it's premature optimisation. It's optimisation, yes. But premature? We already know the overhead of compiling code each time. We can compare that to the caching speed. If the cache is slower than recompiling, then we throw away that code, don't commit it to the main trunk, and document it. If the cache is faster than recompiling each time, especially in small programs (where compilation is a larger percentage of the runtime), then it's a proven optimisation.

Finally, I mostly disagree with the OP that this is really even needed. I laugh at my cow-orkers that work in Java. By the time that their code has finished recompiling, my code is almost done executing. And we have similar numbers of lines of code to work with. They won't even have their code loaded into memory by the time mine is finished running, the JVM load time is so slow.

My cow-orkers working in C/C++ are somewhere in the middle .. except that they're all writing JNI code, which again relies on that JVM load time :-)

In reply to Re^3: Perl: friend or foe ? by Tanktalus
in thread Perl: friend or foe ? by MonkPaul

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.