Re: NSThread or NSTimer
Re: NSThread or NSTimer
- Subject: Re: NSThread or NSTimer
- From: Shawn Erickson <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:42:16 -0700
On Apr 27, 2004, at 12:35 PM, Shawn Erickson wrote:
On Apr 27, 2004, at 11:52 AM, Bob Ippolito wrote:
On Apr 27, 2004, at 2:06 PM, Jesus De Meyer wrote:
I understand that NSThread is usually used with multiple document
applications or when you wanna use a second processor.
But for simple applications that just need some kind of update
method, what should I use? I ask because I have the impression that
NSThread will add better performance than if I use an NSTimer,
although I'm not sure if this statement is true.
Again, I'm talking about simple applications that only have need one
"update loop", for example to update certain interface elements.
For this kind of task, what's better, NSThread or NSTimer?
In general you shouldn't use threads until you have to, so use
NSTimer.
One obvious hint on when you should start to shuttle longer running
items off to a thread is when you see the spinning beach ball. This
beach ball is telling you that some operation you are doing is holding
off the main thread from handling events (user events, etc.) in a
timely fashion.
Even before then you should attempt to insure that your UI remains
responsive to the user while it is working on things. You can use
threads to help insure this and/or by using non-blocking capabilities
of APIs/frameworks that you are using (for example NSFileHandle's
readInBackgroundAndNofity and friends).
As a side note Apple has a conceptual doc on threading and Cocoa, if it
helps at all.
<
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/
Multithreading/index.html>
-Shawn
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