[lug] Development & reporting tool choices

[Rob Nagler]

Scott Rohling writes:
> Um - could you explain yourself?

I think the numbers speak for themselves.  bivio.com is a 10 year old
automated accounting, tax, file sharing, bulletin board, etc. ASP
which is currently doing the tax returns for a few thousand investment
partnerships.  It starts in 12 seconds.  The calendaring app starts in
200 seconds.  Obviously a "compiled" language is not faster, or the
calendar app is so much more complicated than what bivio.com does,
which I seriously doubt.

> You compile code once.. not every time it's run. 

We compile code every time the server starts, and it's an order of
magnitude faster than "compiling once" and running the "binary".

>  Interpreting a program each time it's run to executable code
> (essentially a compile) takes more CPU - not less..   or am I just
> misunderstanding (entirely possible) your assertion?

Perl is faster than Java to start.  I once heard about a Java program
at Sun that took 24 hours to compile.  They hired a friend of mine to
help them optimize the compile process.  He got it down to 8 hours.
Our slowest application is bivio.com.  All the rest start in a couple
of seconds.

> Compiled languages are what operating systems and high performance
> code are written in..  so why is it 'beyond' you to understand?

We know a few things about software:

* 80% of the code does 20% of the work
* 1% (or less) needs to be optimized

These rules haven't changed in all the years I've been developing
software.  Yet, these simple facts seem to escape the vast majority of
programmers out there.  

That's what's beyond me.

Rob