Edit menu recipe?

[Richard Gaskin]

J. Landman Gay wrote:

> On 8/20/04 7:31 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> 
>> Yes, in older, slower xTalks one might get a noticeable difference 
>> between "do" and the natural message path.
>>
>> But it's a whole other world with Transcript -- this script tests 
>> timing of both the natural message path and the "do" command:
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
>> So yes, using the do command is slower, but only by about 0.003ms.
>>
>> Given that the menu script is responding to a user action and no user 
>> will be faster than 0.003ms, there's no perceptable savings to the 
>> system's performance, but using do can offer immediate savings for 
>> developer productivity.
> 
> The "lost" productivity in the script I submitted consists of typing an 
> extra 5 words, which doesn't slow me down much.

There's no disputing tastes.  Those extra words added up for me when I 
was a one-handed typist for a year, but hopefully that's something few 
will endure.

My main point was just that I didn't want to leave folks with the 
impression that using "do" was a mistake.  Sometimes it's very useful, 
and in Transcript the penalty is imperceptible, almost immeasurable.

> Continuing the curmudgeonliness: I'll keep doing it my way, I think. I 
> am of the school that says loading the compiler unnecessaily is poor 
> programming practice. A similar example would be in using unquoted 
> literals; it works fine in many cases and doesn't really slow things 
> down that much, but I don't use use them because they too are a poor 
> habit to get into.

Fully agreed on unquoted literals: in addition to the reason you mention 
there are two others:

- it's easier to skim code for strings when they're quoted

- unquoted literals break when explicitVars is on

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com