Re: Faster UTF-8 decoding in GLib

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

2010/3/16 Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>:
> On 03/16/2010 01:18 PM, Daniel Elstner wrote:
>> Well, I would see a point since UTF-8 decoding is a fairly generic
>> operation.  It cannot hurt to be as fast as possible at this task.
>> Assuming, of course, that the optimization does not introduce other
>> costs elsewhere, which I think the proposal unfortunately does.
>
> That's one of the worst ideas as far as software goes.  If an operation takes
> 1% of your application time and you make it 1000 times faster, you know how
> much total faster your application would run? 1.01x faster...
>
> That developer time can be put somewhere more useful instead....  Like
> optimizing something that is taking 20% time, or 50%, or 70%.

This logic has always bothered me, why would it automatically mean
that someone interested in tinkering with UTF-8 operations would
instead do something else useful for Glib? Maybe he'll rather just
tinker away with UTF-8 in some other library?

I can understand if micro-optimizations are debunked with arguments
concerning not touching working code, validity reasons an possible
intrusiveness to internal structure, but not with "I don't think this
is worthwhile so please don't do it even if you want to".

Just rambling here, please don't take it personally! :)

-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi
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