Re: Type estimating Octave Compiler

[Lars Arvestad]

David Bateman wrote:

> The fact is I see the JIT as much more important than the compiler. In 
> matlab, compiled code has a different license status than the original 
> code and can be run without a license to matlab, and to me that is the 
> essential use of the matlab compiler... However as octave doesn't have 
> this issue, if the JIT can be made to give essentially the same speed 
> as the compiled code, then the compiled versions have much less interest.

As a Octave user, I don't quite understand your reasoning. I have 
developed a numerically intensive little research application under 
Octave and during development I never felt speed was an issue. When 
doing serious evaluation of the application, however, speed became an 
issue and I was dreaming of having an Octave compiler. I guess much of 
my problems would go away with a JIT too, but that sounds much harder to 
develop and would not allow me to do fun stuff such as produce a 
library, from Octave code, and link it to another application.

My vote does not weigh much since I don't contribute code to Octave, but 
I would like to voice my opinion that a Octave compiler released soon is 
much more valuable than a JIT later.

BTW, thanks for all your great coding efforts!

   Lars

--
Stockholm Bioinformatics Center and Dept Num Analysis and Comp Science
http://www.nada.kth.se/~arve