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Always taking on the most difficult thing instead of waiting until you have no choice but to clean house sounds like the best strategy for java garbage collecti
by stretchwithme 16y ago
Always taking on the most difficult thing instead of waiting until you have no choice but to clean house sounds like the best strategy for java garbage collection, running your life, running a country, you name it.
- Groxx 16y agoThat doesn't really map to computers, which spend an enormous amount of time waiting and doing nothing. Putting it off lets you collect when nothing is happening, which would otherwise be "wasted" time. More in general, putting things off frequently means being able to handle them without interruption when the time is right; it's only a problem if the right time doesn't come up frequently enough (too busy). And context switching is pretty much guaranteed to be expensive in every circumstance, be it computers, your life, or a country. Back to computers again, this would mean that the problem is being too busy, not that you put it off - they'll likely take about the same amount of time no matter when they're handled; if anything, they're more likely to be faster if done all at once rather than bit by bit, due to cache behaviors. At that point you know you have other, larger problems.
- stretchwithme 16y agook, when all urgent and important things have been attended to, do the most important, non-urgent thing regardless of how hard it is, until its done or something urgent and important needs doing.
- sitmack 16y agoFrom an Darwinian stand point it does not. But then again, eager Haskell got to 80% of GHC by one person in one year so you might have a point. Is this why Fascism thrives in tropical climates?
- Charuru 16y agoNot really. you shouldn't be always doing the hardest thing, but the thing that gives you the most value/ROI, or in terms of >1 entity, the thing with which you have the most comparative advantage.
- stretchwithme 16y agoplease see my earlier response to the first response to my comment
- IgorPartola 16y agoI disagree. Context switches are always expensive. If I devote 60 seconds to washing dishes, then 60 seconds to picking up trash, then to coding, then to mopping, then to laundry... You get the idea. On the other hand ignoring hard (or boring) tasks has other negative consequences. I try to balance my activities and devote reasonable amount of time to each task when there is enough work to be done. Multiplexing poor old me, if you will. Pause the world scenarios are not that detremental as long as your total throughput does not diminish. On topic: so they traded some large unexpected pauses for a lower throughput rate. I like the lazy object remapping idea. I usually like stability over increased throughput and this scheme seems to provide just that.
- stretchwithme 16y agoplease see my earlier response to the first response to my comment
- rdtsc 16y agoSometimes the most difficult things becomes easier over time, either because it is solved by someone else, or the situation changes where it is not necessary to solve it any more . For example, "Should I rewrite this in C or just wait buy faster hardware next year?"
- wingo 16y ago"... or write a faster compiler because everyone has a secret desire to write a compiler?" A compiler of course! :) [And then once you have your compiler, like Click did, GC becomes an obvious next hack!]