From: Isaac Gouy <igouy@...>
Date: 2006-07-27T01:45:07+09:00
Subject: Re: For performance, write it in C


harrisj@schizopolis.net wrote:
> >
> > Kristof Bastiaensen wrote:
> >> On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 17:47:13 +0900, Peter Hickman wrote:
> >>
> >> > Whenever the question of performance comes up with scripting languages
> >> > such as Ruby, Perl or Python there will be people whose response can
> >> be
> >> > summarised as "Write it in C". I am one such person. Some people take
> >> > offence at this and label us trolls or heretics of the true
> >> programming
> >> > language (take your pick).
> >> >
> >> > <snip>
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> When reading your C code, I saw that there is a lot of code that is
> >> generated.  I'd be interested to see how well the C program does if
> >> it can work for any size of the squares. In this case I think the
> >> problem
> >> is well suited for logic languages. I wrote a version in the functional
> >> logic language Curry, which does reasonably well.  It will probably not
> >> be
> >
> > Interesting ... I read somewhere that the OCaml language, while
> > higher-level than C (and a functional one too), runs some programs at
> > least, as fast or faster than C ...
> > Not sure how true that is ...
> >
> > Vasudev
> > http://www.dancingbison.com
>
> You read that correctly. The problem is that nearly every benchmark I've
> seen for comparing the performance of various languages has been a
> repeated mathematical operation like computing a Mandelbrot Set or running
> Fibonacci Sequences that all but guarantees the edge will belong to
> functional languages like Haskell and OCAML or stripped-down assembly-like
> languages like C (http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/debian/ for samples),
> because they are best suited for straight-up number crunching.

Once you ignore the stuff that beats up on hash-tables, character
manipulation, regex, concurrency,  memory allocation, ... you will be
left with array-access and number crunching.

otoh regex-dna makes Tcl look good :-)
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=regexdna&lang=tcl&id=2


> Are there good benchmarks for OO languages? Or dynamic languages? Are there good
> benchmarks that could actually measure the types of uses I need, where I'm
> building a web front end to a DB store? I don't know about you, but my job
> has never involved fractals.

Never involved double math in tight loops?


> I used to put faith into benchmarks like this, but now I think about
> developer time and maintenance time as well. That seems to be a more
> intelligent approach.
>
> Jake

"your application is the ultimate benchmark"
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/miscfile.php?file=benchmarking&title=Flawed%20Benchmarks#app