Re: Is C's parameter passing more-efficient than ObjC's message passing?
Re: Is C's parameter passing more-efficient than ObjC's message passing?
- Subject: Re: Is C's parameter passing more-efficient than ObjC's message passing?
- From: Charlton Wilbur <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:24:07 -0500
On Feb 10, 2006, at 8:36 PM, Erik Buck wrote:
Don't worry about it! If you are not aware of the different
implementations between C function calls and Objective-C message
passing then any attempt to select one over the other for
performance reasons is almost surely premature optimization and
misguided.
In particular, the overhead of dispatching a function or message send
is usually miniscule compared to the time spent in the actual
function. The Objective-C message dispatching buys you one heck of a
lot of power and flexibility; by the time you get to 1000 or so lines
of code, the computer time you save by micro-optimizing on that level
is likely to be dwarfed by the programmer time you spend managing all
that complexity by hand. Further, the relative amounts of time spent
in message dispatching versus message implementation means that
you're likely to see significantly more improvement by improving your
algorithm and its implementation, delaying concerns of function or
message dispatching until all other optimization has been done.
In other words: yes, C's parameter passing is more efficient in
computer time than Objective-C's message dispatching. But Objective-
C's message dispatching is *far* more efficient in programmer time,
and frequently more resilient as well, once you get past a minimal
size of program.
Charlton
--
Charlton Wilbur
email@hidden
email@hidden
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