Day: GNOME OS

> As for build times, yes, it's higher, but I don't really notice that much of a practical difference and what difference there is is well worth the extra safety the code has.

Unfortunately, a fair comparison can't be made without ensuring at least feature parity between the C and C++. You also have to compare bug counts and code ease-of-use (for users of the code/APIs, developers, and maintainers) and in this, C++ is a big win IMO.

The C++ SpiderMonkey has more features today than it used to have (I expect) and you have to weigh how long it took to code those features versus how long it would have taken with the C codebase to get the same features against the increased build times.

As for using a netbook, I don't know what my limits for patience would be anymore. After using my i7 and Xeon machines at work, even my Core 2 Duo was getting me impatient with builds. I don't do much beyond script-level stuff (usually Haskell, shell, or Python) or minor web development on the netbook anymore mainly due to the tiny screen (my terminals at work are 319 wide and 88 tall and netbooks just don't fit 3 80-wide Vim windows plus NERDTree on them at readable font sizes).