A story about Python... sort of

[Dave Brueck]

On Thursday 03 July 2003 07:18 am, Peter Hansen wrote:
> Max Khesin wrote:
> > import flame.*
> > import sorry.*
> > Ok, with all my respect to python, the stuff about C++ is a bunch of
> > hooey. Compilation time is the problem? Give me a break.
> > 1) separate compilation?
> > 2) precompiled headers?
> > 3) tools that allow cluster compilation?
> > 4) ever read 'large-scale c++ development' by Lacos? a must for large c++
> > project. letter-envelope idiom to help compilation...etc.
>
> Sounds to me that if they've come up with so many and such a wide
> range of optimizations to improve compilation time, then it clearly *is*
> a problem...

Yep! I just read an article in the July issue of Game Developer that mentioned 
this topic (item #3 above) in passing. It was a post-mortem of the project 
and they cited as one of their life-savers a tool that used all computers in 
the office to assist in the compilation of the game - a compilation farm 
basically - so that the full rebuild of the game could be reduced to only 3 
minutes. Obviously you don't need to do a "rebuild all" for every change to 
the code, but compilation and link time is a very real cost, especially as 
the project size grows. Even for small projects though, I'm much more likely 
to try out small, incremental changes in a language like Python than when I 
did C++ or Java because it's just so quick and easy to try it out.

-Dave