Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!jacobse From: jacobse@daimi.aau.dk (Jacob Seligmann) Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Comparison: Beta - Lisp Date: 14 Sep 1994 08:35:24 GMT Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. at Aarhus University Lines: 48 Message-ID: <356ckc$kki@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> References: <34n2qe$d74@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> <34pfea$6ee@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <354q47$60i@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <19940914T000228Z.erik@naggum.no> NNTP-Posting-Host: clematis.daimi.aau.dk Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.lang.beta:41 comp.lang.lisp:13274 Thus spake Erik Naggum : > > [Description of C spaghetti code deleted] > > this is not benchmarking execution speeds of C or LISP or anything. this > is benchmarking a programmer's willingness to write assembly language and > to see how well his assembly language coding style fits various languages. I couldn't agree more! I was simply answering to a post which could be misinterpreted as saying that BETA is inherent 25 times slower than C. This did not reflect my personal impression, so I retrieved the C benchmark program from the original poster, did a simple rewrite in BETA, gained a factor 5, and posted this result along with the programs used for you all to verify. That is, I did not write the spaghetti code in the first place, neither do I feel this is the way to program in BETA, or C, or LISP, or whatever. > are there any good ways to compare _languages_? I think programmer time > spent and number of compilation runs required to solve a particular problem > is a better indication. then, later, we can benchmark the compilers. Again, I agree, as long as your programs are not orders of magnitude slower than what is achievable, and as long as there are no inherent barriers in the language design to ever achieving better performance. > BETA and LISP probably have a lot to tell us about optimal program design > in their respective mind-sets and a comparison of their relative strengths > and idiomatic expressiveness would be instructive. onwards, folks! Actually I was quite surprised to see a BETA-LISP comparison thread in the first place. Sure, BETA strongly supports a functional programming paradigm, but it is still an object-oriented language at heart - it never ceases to amaze me just how versatile and expressive the BETA pattern concept is! Keep the comparisons coming. Cheers, /Jacob Seligmann ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mjolner Informatics ApS Phone: (+45) 86 20 20 00 ext. 2754 Science Park Aarhus Direct: (+45) 86 20 20 11 - 2754 Gustav Wieds Vej 10 Fax: (+45) 86 20 12 22 DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Email: jacobse@mjolner.dk ------------------------------------------------------------------------ BETA is better ------------------------------------------------------------------------