Re: reducing lisp programs' size

[creedy@mitre.org (Chris Reedy)]

In article <ddyerD5Jnzr.5E8@netcom.com>, ddyer@netcom.com wrote:

> It is true that pound-for-pound, lisp requires more real memory, more
real disk,
> and more CPU to get the same actual results from a running program.  The trick
> is to get a running program.
> 
> For my money, efforts to reduce a completed lisp program's size by
> treeshaking, or fasloading, or making shared libraries are not worth
> the effort in modern virtual memory environments.  
> 
> [more comments deleted]

The problem with "modern virtual memory environments" is that they require
real disk space and real I/O capacity to support the virtual memory
mechanism.  This usually isn't a problem for a single user workstation
with reasonably large amounts of real memory and a large disk.  This will
be a problem if you have a system with a number of diskless nodes and/or
nodes with small disks that can't allocate large swap spaces.  And, even
though additional disk space for a single machine may be inexpensive,
additional disk space for a large number of machines (100s to 1000s) can
add up to real money.

  Chris

The above opinions are my own and not MITRE's.
Chris Reedy, Workstation System Engineering Center, Z667
The MITRE Corporation, 7525 Colshire Drive, McLean, VA 22102-3481
Email: creedy@mitre.org  Phone: (703) 883-7183  FAX: (703) 883-6991