Re: The great Java showcase (re: 2nd historic mistake)

[jsa@alexandria.organon.com (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <dewar.873149189@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> JOn said
> 
> "several factors".  Let's face, getting even a 10% advantage is a rare
> thing.  OTOH, even a 10% advantage must then be characterized as a
> "big deal".  Personally, I think GC varies anywhere from 0% to maybe
> 15-20% depending on the application characteristics.
> >>
> 
> Absolutely, gains of 10 or 20% are very significant and very important
> to pursue. The trouble is that if people really start to believe the
> "several hundred percent" or "order of magnitude improvement" claims,
> they may overlook the achievable smaller bug significant gains.

Absolutely agreed.  The importance of this is really hard to
over-emphasize as you can lose site of very real and tangible gains.
Gains that are quite readily seen but are dismissed as not being "good
enough", simply because they aren't that "magic bullet" level
increase.  But the latter is largely a fiction and so you simply mire
yourself into non-progressing technology.  A 10% here a 20% there
etc. really begins to add up over the long term and eventually we
might actually get this "several factors" over the course of building
on these very real "small gains".  That's why the overly prevalent
"all or nothing" attitude in this business is so destructive and self
defeating.

/Jon

-- 
Jon Anthony
OMI, Belmont, MA 02178, 617.484.3383 
"Nightmares - Ha!  The way my life's been going lately,
 Who'd notice?"  -- Londo Mollari