Release 8.0 DP 10

[Richard Gaskin]

Geoff Canyon wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 6:46 AM, Ali Lloyd wrote:
>
>> *Native string performance*
>> The performance of native string operations has been vastly improved, with
>> many achieving similar speeds to those in 6.7.
>
> This is definitely improved. I had already been running tests using list
> parsing, and I just ran that test in 8.0dp10, and while it is still slower
> than 6.7.3, it is *much* faster than 7, or earlier releases of 8:
>
> 6.7.3: 1.77 seconds
> 7.0.3: 32.95 seconds
> 8.0dp1: 32.31 seconds
> 8.0dp10: 2.17 seconds

This is VERY encouraging.

Given the scope of what the team has been doing, from Cocoa to Unicode 
and the hundreds of other enhancements and refinements along the way 
(I've been surprised no one else is as excited about the addition of the 
mobileGetLaunchData function), it would have been a bit much to expect 
all that could come together and also be well optimized in the first pass.

After all, Python took a few builds moving from v2 to v3 to get 
performance back, and even with fewer contributors it seems the LC team 
has accomplished as much in about as much time.

Kudos to Malte for spearheading the benchmarking effort that helped 
identify some of the specific string operations affected.

And of course kudos to the team for these optimizations, proving that 
even if it takes a little time it's possible to add sweeping new 
features and still maintain good performance.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com