Basic questions

[Richard Altenburg]

On 10-05-2003 10:55, "Kem Tekinay" <ktekinay at mactechnologies.com> wrote:

> Side note: Have you ever compiled code in 4D and RB to compare? I mean a
> routine that doesn't access data but simply performs calculation. I've found
> that the code runs much faster in 4D.

No, I never compared them side by side, but I have felt the speed of 4D so
much in the last 10 years, that I can feel the difference easily when I do
certain things in RB with Valentina. So on the database-side, 4D is stronger
but slower than RB/Valentina.

The 4D compiler optimizes code, RB's does not. So I believe your statement
about 4D being faster in lots of cases. I wish I had the money to pay Mars
Saxman for half a year. I would send him to a tropical island with his
compiler code, and have him swim back when after that period he doesn't show
me a fully optimized compiler for both MacOS and Windows compiles (and maybe
even more platforms).

>> In 4D, you would have to use the Tools to do
>> this. 
> 
> FYI, you can also do it in code too. See SET INDEX.

You're right. Forgot about that.

>> But I think you will have to choose between RB and the 4D environment too.
>> As a database, 4D is great, but its integration with the language, its power
>> to work with multiple users but also multiple developers, and its proven
>> technology, are hard to beat.
> 
> Agreed. And don't forget the debugger. RB's is good, but 4D's is great.

I must admit that I hardly ever use a debugger. Never did, in all
environments I was in. But 4D's is good, RB's will get there someday too I
hope. Anyway, I got used to reading my code over and over and interpreting
it like my system would. I do not use a debugger to make my code work, the
logic is already there before I run. But in very hard cases, a good debugger
is great to point out where things go wrong.

>> It was great to have the jokes in 4D, manage them through the web, and have
>> 4D as the webserver, outputting it to clients.
>> 
>> But, it was slow.
> 
> Interesting. The key reason I'm choosing 4D is for the web server stuff so
> this is important to me. Ultimately, this database will be serving to a few
> hundred a day. In what way was it slow?

Serving a few hundred visitors a day is no problem at all for 4D, and when
you are on a tight schedule, you can implement it very fast as you have
knowledge of 4D. It is great to call 4D procedures and functions from within
your web pages. That kind of luxury is not to be found in PHP. But when the
page has to be served to the browser, Apache with PHP makes all the
difference, and I cannot blame 4D for that. Apache is very much optimized
for serving web content, 4D is not. For a lot of static pages, don't use 4D.
For dynamic content, generating HTML from procedures and database data,
well, it is very nice, but don't expect too much speed.

You can easily test everything and make your decisions. But in my opinion,
every product must do what it does best. Apache must serve my pages, 4D must
serve my data, REALbasic must build my user interfaces, Valentina must speed
up my database queries.

I told the REAL guys before to drop their database completely and license
Valentina's. Freeing up some developer time to fix their bugs and stuff. You
see: do what you are good at.