From: stephen@vfxforth.com   
      
   On 15 Sep 2024 at 18:16:34 CEST, "Anton Ertl"  wrote:   
      
   >> I can buy a lot of CPU cycles for the cost of one day of programmer   
   >> time.   
   >   
   > Some guy called Stephen Pelc (must be a different one) recentlu posted   
   > :   
   >   
   > |We (MPE) converted much of our TCP/IP stack not to use locals. This   
   > |was mostly on ARM7 devices, but the figures for other 32 bit CPUs of   
   > |the period (say 15 years ago) were similar. Code density improved by   
   > |about 25% and performance by about 50%.   
   >   
   > How much time did that conversion cost?  And this Stephen Pelc   
   > suggested that Buzz McCool (and probably everyone else) should also   
   > spend their time on avoiding and eliminating locals from their code.   
   >   
   > I am with you here, not with the other Stephen Pelc: Programmers   
   > should use locals liberally if it saves them time, even in the face of   
   > slow locals implementations, because you can buy a lot of CPU cycles   
   > for the additional programming cost of avoiding locals.   
      
   What you ignore is that the constraints of embedded systems with small   
   alow CPUs (by comparison with desktop CPUs) are very different from   
   those of desktop CPUs. Converting the TCP/IP stack was driven by the   
   client requirement to fit a TCP/IP app into 128k/256k Flash and 16k RAM.   
      
   I would not make that trade off today.   
      
   So there's only one Stephen Pelc but two application domains.   
      
   Stephen   
   --   
   Stephen Pelc, stephen@vfxforth.com   
   MicroProcessor Engineering, Ltd. - More Real, Less Time   
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