Short note: Optimisation versus requirements

[sur-behoffski <sur_behoffski@...>]

G'day,

Sometimes systems have real-time requirements built into them.
An example I've come across is in telephony:  The "emergency"
number -- 911 or 000 -- where the device receiving the sequence
must provide a full audio path within one second of the end of
dialling.

When such real-time requirements occur, they can force 
constraints on implementation performance:  Perhaps various
code path/instruction selection items may move from
"optimisation" status to "requirement" status in these cases.

As others have said, Lua is intended to work with C, and there
are many more opportunities in C to express required behaviour
(via #pragmas, in-line assembly, etc.).

My two cents is to be conservative with Lua syntax/semantics:
It's easier to initially adopt a restrictive stance, and
later on relax that stance in cases where it's clearly
intolerable, than it is to lax at first, and force users to
suffer breakage if the stance has to be tightened.

cheers,

sur-behoffski (Brenton Hoff)
programmer, Grouse Software