Author: Uri Blass
Date: 09:28:56 01/10/03
Go up one level in this thread
On January 10, 2003 at 10:52:37, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On January 10, 2003 at 08:01:45, Dan Andersson wrote: > >>A couple of postings on comp.lang.scheme implemented the CoyoteGulch benchmarks >>in Scheme. And lo and behold BigLoo produced faster code for the numerical >>benchmark. One might object that since BigLoo emits C or Java bytecode it isn't >>really faster. But the amount of automated program transformations that are >>applied is huge. For a coder to do the same thing would be like trying to >>outperform a spreadsheet. And the C code is inhuman in nature. And the question >>arises: Why on earth would one use C++ or Java? Both are verbose and terribly >>low level compared to lambda calculus. >> >>MvH Dan Andersson > >I disagree. > >When i converted my functional international checkers program to C it was not >bigger in code and it was 10000 times faster in C than in Gofer (which also has >lambda). > >Later efforts from expert gofer programmers speeded it up another 2 times. > >Big deal. factor 5000 difference. > >Compiling it was not very well possible that gofer language, because there were >no good compilers for it (the only thing that was there was some stupid turbo-C >thing and by then turbo-C was completely outdated and only worked in DOS not >windows). > >However on a fast PC i tried and the difference after some tuning was still a >factor 100 favourable for C. > >It is not true that functional programming is easier. Instead it is more >difficult to learn because you need more functions and shorter functions. The >lambda you will never manage to explain whereas the imperative languages are >clear for everyone. > >The big 'advantage' of gofer was said to be easy parsing anything. Then they had >a script to 'parse' in such a way that it could be used to use gofer for CGI >parsing. > >Then i had a contest between someone who promoted on Gofer (so not exactly a >gofer beginner) who would be using gofer mixed with haskell to parse some type >of output from a homepage into a textfile and then converting it back to a >resulting html page which showed results. > >I would write it in C. He in gofer+haskell (whatever). > >After 10 minutes i was nearly done and after going to the toilet and then fixing >another bug after in total 30 minutes i finished my C parser and had it bugfree >working and doing anything and everything. > >After 2 hours he still didn't manage to write the equivalent in Gofer+Haskell, >even though he could use a 'cool' number of already existing scripts whereas i >parsed the direct (method POST) output. > >My CGI script in C was like 200 lines at most but it easy to write and easy to >debug. It took another few afternoons before the equivalent in Gofer was ready. > >30 minutes including bathroom stop in C is equivalent to some hours of >functional coding. > >Best regards, >Vincent I am surprised that you can write 200 C lines in 10 minutes with only one bug. ut means that you write one line in one second. To be more correct you say at most 200 lines but even if I assume that it was only 100 lines still writing one line in 6 seconds seems impossible for me. Only writing your program from memory (if I remember all the program) seems to me more time. I also almost never write 200 lines without some testings in the middle for bugs. Uri
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