Further optimization will be seen as premature optimization. Our focus will shift to making parrot actually work.
If we never optimize, we won't have the speed to run real-world programs. But if all we do is optimize, we won't have the features to run real-world programs.
Programming, like all things, is a balance. Has Parrot found that balance? Probably not. I agree that we do focus too much on optimization now and then, leaving us with things like the COW system (clever, but tricky, and so pervasive) that are hard to maintain and easy to trip over. Other times, we add lots of new features, and then stop to test them and find they're incredibly slow. (That's objects right now.)
But keep in mind that, if we don't optimize at all, we would end up with an interpreter nobody wanted to use. And at *that* point, the incredible slowness of the interpreter would be overwhelming, and nobody would want to try to optimize it.
Just a thought.
-- Brent "Dax" Royal-Gordon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Perl and Parrot hacker
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
