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To: JC Jaros who wrote (1996)12/22/1999 1:09:00 AM
From: E. Charters  Read Replies (1) of 2617
 
Actually the ISAM code that Vbasic uses (JET engine) is probably as fast or faster than any C code you could use. It lacks real record locking. It does page locking. It is also not that robust for enterprise loads. With lots or writes your base would get fragmented fast.

If you are doing comm on hi speed lines, let's say a T1 then you had better lose the C code as it will jam things up. On an Intel box the only thing that works for winsock code is to rewrite all the stuff in your own machine language code and supplement it with your own buffer handlers. Otherwise you will get a lot of people waiting around to connect and data falling on the floor. Assembler is up to 100 times faster than BASIC and perhaps 5 times faster than C. Even FORTRAN which is the next fastest language to assembler is perhaps 2 to 3 times faster than C.

There is really no comparison with assembler. When you get a modem with a whole 8 bytes as a buffer, you can appreciate why your routines should be timed and real fast small loops.

You just have to decide whether to write relocatable code and to go beyond 64K bytes.

I know some people who write financial trading software for PC networks that communicate over the Internet to "broadcast" databases. They tell me that assembler is the only thing that works.

If you write a large program in C you will get two effects. On one hand you will get alot of memory bugs due to boundary memory error conditions and the program will get slower and slower and harder to fix as it expands. C is a structureless language that is really not suited for writing large programs. A better strategy is to write the systems stuff such as the windowing and the like in C, the comm stuff in BASIC to debug it quick and then translate that to assembler as an optimization. The basic overall business rule code could be written in Pascal. Write the database stuff in RBASE or COBOL. Flange it altogether with airplane glue and a bottle of Jack Daniels and it should fly.

When you write 4GL code you will find that it complexifies until you lose track of all your objects. If you have a really large program to write and you have to get it out the door, then C or any of the OOP languages are verboten. One man can handle perhaps 400 objects and maybe 5,000 lines of C code and then he is toast. After that you need teams of geniuses. (At least half of Norton Utilities was written in assembler.)

Write it in a procedural language that has been around for 20 years and get paid. Use the OOP stuff to write your lifetime project dream that will never get done. At least you can enjoy doing it, even if it will never work.

EC<:-}
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