Re: Time to heat up the new module discussion

["Ben Maurer" <bmaurer andrew cmu edu>]

> On Thu, 2006-07-13 at 02:00, Ben Maurer wrote: [...]
>> In the long term, Mono can potentially reduce our performance problems.
>> 
> 
> In the short term, there are performance problems and Mono will worsen 
> them.

In the short term, Mono will deliver us applications many times more innovative than what we currently have. They might consume a bit more memory than what they would have if written in C. However, writing in them C would mean waiting much longer.

If we can write the basic functionality faster, we have more time to spend on performance.

> [...]
>> IMHO, we should define a process that does not start "Python is
>> bloated, C# is bloated. Lets not use them". We must establish clear
>> guidelines as to what is allowed. When talking about performance, talk
>> in megabytes, not languages.
> 
> A good start would be: let's take an old (but still existing) platform, 
> like a pIII with 128 or 256 Mb RAM, and have a basic desktop running fine
> on it.
> 
> "Basic desktop": - panel + a few applets (including power manager,
> network-manager ...) - nautilus - epiphany - evolution
> 
> "Running fine": - be responsive - don't swap too much - no need to restart
> apps each day
> 
> As said elsewhere, temporary apps (like a menu editor) don't matter but 
> long-running ones (mailer, panel, applets, filemanager) should have a 
> deterministic, capped memory usage.

The addition of mono is not affecting in any way this goal. I think that it is, in general, a good goal.

-- Ben