Refactoring is your friend / moving from 6.x to 9.x

[Geoff Canyon]

I wasn't sure what people were talking about with lock screen performance
issues, so I did a simple test: I set up a button to either lock the screen
once, or twice, and then timed setting the loc of the button while the
screen was locked. I didn't time locking the screen; just the movement
while locked. As I hoped, I didn't find any difference between locking once
or twice, either in 6.7.3, or in 9.0.1 (on an up-to-date Mac).

But...

There was a significant performance difference between 6.7.3 and 9.0.1.
*Maybe* this is Unicode related? In any case, this script takes about 0.04
seconds in 6.7.3, and 0.24 seconds in 9.0.1:

on mouseUp
   put the loc of me into L1
   put L1 into L2
   lock screen
   put the long seconds into T
   repeat 100000
      set the loc of me to L2
      set the loc of me to L1
   end repeat
   put the long seconds - T into T
   unlock screen
   put T
end mouseUp

Then I noticed that I had forgotten one line of code. I changed it to this:

on mouseUp
   put the loc of me into L1
   put L1 into L2
   add 100 to item 1 of L2
   lock screen
   put the long seconds into T
   repeat 100000
      set the loc of me to L2
      set the loc of me to L1
   end repeat
   put the long seconds - T into T
   unlock screen
   put T
end mouseUp

...and found that in 6.7.3 that change increased the duration to about 1.25
seconds -- a performance hit of about 30x just because a locked-screen
button is actually moving. In 9.0.1, the time changed to about 0.35
seconds. So if the button *isn't* moving, 6.7.3 is much faster, but in the
more practical and likely case that the button *is* moving, 9.0.1 is
faster. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 11:03 PM Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> Read through this whole thread, optimistic that I'd find the list of
> things that differentiate v6 and v9 so we can hone in on actual solutions.
>
> I learned two things:
>
>   - lock/unlock changed
>
>   - It's apparently easier to write a thousands of words philosophizing
>     about how a small team of C++ programmers should provide a uniform
>     scripting interface for a nearly unprecedented number of OSes,
>     stay on top of ongoing API changes in every one of those OSes,
>     multiply features, fix bugs, incorporate Unicode, maintain or improve
>     all aspects of performance, and keep the joint running than it is to
>     even briefly summarize concerns about any of the above.
>
> Is there an actual list of concrete concerns here that the team may be
> able to take action on or at least explain how/why the change exists, or
> did I just spend an hour reading that I'll never get back?
>
> I feel rickrolled.
>
>
> I've worked with too many people moving from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, or
> Python 2 to 3, or any version of Apple's C headers in the '90s that
> broke declarations quarterly, or HyperCard 2 to 3, to get too
> out-of-breath about undoing workarounds in old code to work
> with-the-grain for v9's enhancements and fixes for long-standing
> anomalies.  When I describe LC's high priority for backward
> compatibility to nearly any other experienced dev I know, they look at
> me like I'm high and spouting tales of dancing ponies; many professional
> development systems consider backward compatibility a very minor
> nice-to-have, if they devote time to it at all. Many of us here buy
> computers from a hardware vendor with a similar view.
>
> As for performance, in threads with Geoff Canyon, Mark Talutto, and
> others who provided real-world use cases and metrics, we do see some
> performance degradation in v9 from v6 in some cases, a surprising amount
> on par given how relatively little work v6 had to do under the hood with
> encodings and types, a few things a wee bit faster, and overall such a
> strong comeback from the v7 series that it should be clear to those
> earnestly following along that the team has indeed been quite evidently
> working on performance, and delivering improvements over the v9 cycle.
>
> Then again, my work may not touch the items on the concern list.  I
> can't know, because I couldn't find such a list in this long thread.
>
> --
>   Richard Gaskin
>   Fourth World Systems
>   Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
>   ____________________________________________________________________
>   Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
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