WordCount performance

[Walter Bright]

Saaa wrote:
>> P.P.S. Back in the 80's, my compiler would regularly beat the tar out of 
>> other compilers on magazine I/O speed benchmarks. It's because my library 
>> used a large disk buffer, which made a HUGE difference when reading files 
>> from a floppy disk. My competitors never did figure that out until about 
>> 10 years later <g>.
> 
> lol

The hilarity is that full library source was included with the compiler 
- what I was doing was in plain sight!

Understanding how I/O works is still key to making high performance 
programs, despite there being very little discussion about it.