During some recent memory profiling I was reacquainted with just how many ways there are to unknowingly allocate an object in AS3. The problem is seldom the allocation itself, but rather the later garbage collection (GC) to delete those objects. Ever used a Flash profiler only to see a huge chunk of your CPU time going to [reap], [mark], or [sweep]? Yeah, that’s the GC at work. Today’s article talks about some of the ways you end up allocating objects in AS3 without using the new keyword. These subtle errors can end up costing you!
Posts Tagged catch
Typecasting: Part 3
Jan 17
Today’s article is a followup to an article (Cast Speed, itself a followup to Two Types of Casts) from September that continues to gather comments. Sharp-eyed reader fastas3 brought up a good point that warranted some further investigation into the topic. So today we’ll be taking yet-another look at typecasting in AS3 to try to unravel some of its strange mysteries.
Try/Catch Slowdown: Part 2
Oct 16
Today’s article is in response to a comment left about my article on try/catch slowdowns. The second time around I will provide an example that is hopefully more “real world” than the last article provided.
Try/Catch Slowdown
Oct 14
Try/catch blocks are certainly a nice feature to have. They allow you to catch errors that are beyond your control and handle them in a nice manner. They also allow you to throw your own errors and handle them in the same way. This would all be great if it weren’t for the fact that they are tremendously slow. Read on for some surprising test results.
