Review of Andrei's std.benchmark

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 9/20/12 3:42 AM, Manu wrote:
> On 19 September 2012 12:38, Peter Alexander
> <peter.alexander.au at gmail.com <mailto:peter.alexander.au at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         The fastest execution time is rarely useful to me, I'm almost
>         always much
>         more interested in the slowest execution time.
>         In realtime software, the slowest time is often the only
>         important factor,
>         everything must be designed to tolerate this possibility.
>         I can also imagine other situations where multiple workloads are
>         competing
>         for time, the average time may be more useful in that case.
>
>
>     The problem with slowest is that you end up with the occasional OS
>     hiccup or GC collection which throws the entire benchmark off. I see
>     your point, but unless you can prevent the OS from interrupting, the
>     time would be meaningless.
>
>
> So then we need to start getting tricky, and choose the slowest one that
> is not beyond an order of magnitude or so outside the average?

That's exactly where it all starts getting unprincipled. Just use the 
minimum.

Just. Use. The. Minimum.

Andrei