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Comment by thangalin | Hacker News Reader

On a slightly related note, a just-in-time compiler with a superb garbage collector can be more performant in some situations due to its ability to profile and optimize the code while the application is running.

Such runtime statistical analysis and real-time optimization is not possible in an application that is compiled to native code.

For $189, I can slap a 240GB SSD in the machine to make software more performant. The question you have to ask is: How much optimization can a senior-level programmer accomplish for $189?

JDeveloper (an IDE) takes about 30 seconds to start on my co-workers' computers. On my laptop, boasting a 240GB SSD, JDeveloper is ready in about 5 seconds.

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>On a slightly related note, a just-in-time compiler with a superb garbage >collector can be more performant in some situations due to its ability to >profile and optimize the code while the application is running.

No Garbage collector can be faster then a programm that produces no garbage at all, because its programmer knew what he was doing.

>For $189, I can slap a 240GB SSD in the machine to make software more >performant. The question you have to ask is: How much optimization can >a senior-level programmer accomplish for $189?

This ist the typical academic way of optimization: Let's write some programm and then throw hardware on it until it runs fast enough. In the real world, ressources are limited. That $189 are needed for each install of your garbage-collected software, not just YOUR personal develoment machine.

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?imodule=CT032V4S...

SSDs are now $51. I don't see this as an academic means of optimization; I see it as a practical business value. Why would I pay a developer to spend 8 hours on optimizations when I can pay a developer to spend 8 hours on features and bug fixes? Meanwhile, I can drop $50 today (as opposed to $200 8 days ago) and get SSDs for the database, web server, and two developer machines?

If SSDs were down to $1 for 64 GB, would you still claim throwing hardware at the problem is an academic solution?

http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/?p=4

"Saying that C is generally several times faster than java is – according to those benchmarks – simply wrong. In other benchmarks Sun and JRockit were even able to beat ICC. Not by much but I guess it’s nevertheless just very remarkable that it’s possible to beat ICC [using a Java Virtual Machine]."

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