executable size

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:28:10 -0500, Andrej Mitrovic  
<andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/20/10, Steven Schveighoffer <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The reality is that
>> executable size *does* matter, and it always will.  Smaller programs  
>> load
>> and run faster.
>
> Smaller programs, as in *less code*? Yes. But I really doubt that an
> application with the *exact same code* is faster if it's executable
> size shrinks. There are some apps that specialize in shrinking an
> executable size, I know that.

No, I mean smaller exe size.  It's well known that shrinking an app so  
portions of it (or all of it) fits into the cache can increase performance.

If using common shared libraries, the OS only need load and store the  
library in memory once, so it can save memory and load more programs, or a  
program that consumes more memory during runtime can run faster without  
having to swap to disk.

-Steve