Kudos to the Firefox 4 TraceMonkey team!

I’ve been quite impressed with the JavaScript floating point performance in FireFox 4, which puts the Delphi compiler to shame. See for yourself this fractal rendering demo:

Mandelbrot Set in HTML 5 Canvas

I’ve made a version of the same code in Delphi XE (source + pre-compiled executable, 331 kB ZIP), and on my machine here, for the 480×480 resolution, where FireFox 4 gets the default view rendered in 124 ms, where the “regular” Delphi version, which is limited to the old FPU, takes about 200 ms

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Code Optimization: Go For the Jugular

Code optimization can sometimes be experienced as a lengthy process, with disruptive effects on code readability and maintainability. For effective optimization, it is crucial to focus efforts on areas where minimal work and minimal changes will have to most impact, ie. go for the jugular

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Delphi 2009 hidden compiler switch?

This morning while debugging a statistical ichthyo-parser I stumbled upon what looked like a Delphi 2009 compiler bug: the compiler was outputting gibberish ASM opcodes… But after further investigations, it appeared this wasn’t completely gibberish, but that it was (somewhat) correct MSIL bytecode!

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