Lists

Open Menu Close Menu

Terms and Conditions
Lists hosted on this site
Email the Postmaster
Tips for posting to public mailing lists

Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?

Subject: Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?
From: Paul Davis <email@hidden>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 12:06:22 -0400

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 11:46 AM, Zack Morris <email@hidden> wrote:

Language today really shouldn’t matter. But it does, so I think that points to smells in the OS that should have been addressed years ago. I’m sure any Swift architects reading this are rolling their eyes right now, but if they want to make programming a better place, they could go ahead and write this run layer thingy. Ya... that would be great.

This is completely false.

The program is that "languages" are not "just" languages. They come with runtime libraries which *do stuff*. Some of that stuff is a result of language semantics (e.g. garbage collection) and some of it is a result of trying to hold the programmer's hand. Even if the computational speed of the language implementation is fast enough, what screws up realtime safety is the stuff the runtime does without you explicitly asking for it.

Even C comes with a runtime, but it generally doesn't do a whole lot that gets in the way of realtime code.

Is it possible to write a "modern" language that has an RT safe runtime component? Probably. Has it been done? Probably. Does anyone know its name? Probably not.

And by the way, this claim:

Also stream processing is computationally pretty simple, because CPUs today mostly sit around waiting for RAM.

is also completely false. Good DSP code these days is often using SSE units and is absolutely NOT sitting around waiting for RAM. Copying samples from A to B ... sure, that might be covered by your assertion. But actual signal processing (e.g. reverb, and even, to a limited extent, a delay line) is not.

As an official Old Fart (TM), it gets really tiring hearing youngsters (e.g. my brother :) suggesting that their lovely languages (and yes, I do love python and lua) are just natural fits for real time programming. If you think this, you really don't understand what a language is. These contemporary languages do make programming more efficient and sometimes a lot more fun. They do not, however, address the inherent problems of RT-safe systems and the problems of hidden components of the runtime that get in the way.

 _______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Coreaudio-api mailing list      (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:

This email sent to email@hidden

References:
	>Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift? (From: Ian Kemmish <email@hidden>)
	>Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift? (From: Zack Morris <email@hidden>)

Prev by Date: Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?
Next by Date: Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?
Previous by thread: Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?
Next by thread: Re: Real-time buffer playback in Swift?
Index(es):
- Date
- Thread