Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 11:12:01 +0800 (GMT) From: Orlando Andico To: "Michael L. Smith" cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: OmniBasic benchmark In-Reply-To: <5u6ro8$tg_004@mlsmith.ktis.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Precedence: bulk On Fri, 29 Aug 1997, Michael L. Smith wrote: .. > Shane, > > I was not aware what the -03 option did. It looks like Orlando is looking for > every advantage he can get. In previous post he accused Omni of using register > variables (which it was not) and then using them for himself. Now that I find > out what the -03 does, it appears he really wants to stack the deck. What some > people may be missing in all this is that we at Omni have a very high regard > for both gcc and DJGPP or we wouldn't have invested over a 1000 man-hours into > Omni which uses these great resources. The real point of the post was to show > that one could obtain respectable speed (compared to C) using OmniBasic which > is a higher level language and probably more suited for certain applications > and at the same time not give up pointers, portability, etc. I'm not looking for every advantage I can get or stacking the deck :) I was merely pointing out that giving GCC higher levels of optimization will produce faster code. I don't think it should be _that_ hard to tell OmniBasic to use -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer and get even faster speeds. However: I stick by my original premise that a do-nothing loop is basically braindead as a benchmark. Even BYTE Magazine in the early 1980's was using the Sieve of Eratosthenes as a Basic benchmark, and NOT a do-nothing loop. I am a (somewhat great) fan of Basic, I've used Turbo/Power/Quick/Visual Basic. And I think it's great that Basic can approach/exceed the speed of C-compiled code. The reason I shifted to C was because I discovered that QuickBasic was not quick at all -- about 1/3rd the speed of the old Turbo C I was using at the time. I wasn't accusing Omni of anything :) (Unless it's offering a crippled version of OmniBasic :) I really would consider using it, except how BIG is BIG? I don't want to start writing a project and find out that it won't compile. Call me spoiled by free software, but I really don't see any reason to use Basic if I have to pay a significant amount for it, considering that I can use C for free :) I'm not saying that charging for software isn't right. But I'm perfectly happy with GCC. BTW: you mentioned that the Linux version of OmniBasic has XForms support. I use XForms myself with C/C++. Since OmniBasic is commercial, I presume you've had to license XForms from Dr Zhao? have you modified the Form Designer to output Basic code? Cheers! ------------------------------------------------------------------- Orlando Alcantara Andico WWW: http://www2.mozcom.com/~orly/ Email: orly AT mozcom DOT com ICBM: 14 30 00 N 120 59 00 E POTS: (+632) 932-2385