Author: Uri Blass
Date: 19:41:10 02/17/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 17, 2004 at 19:33:52, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On February 17, 2004 at 06:41:11, Tord Romstad wrote: > >>On February 16, 2004 at 14:38:44, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On February 16, 2004 at 14:25:10, Tord Romstad wrote: >>> >>>>On February 16, 2004 at 14:03:11, Robert Hyatt wrote: >>>> >>>>>Please re-read my statement. Look at the date. Then re-read yours. >>>>> >>>>>My statement was written in 1997. In general Lisp _was_ interpreted. >>>> >>>>No, it wasn't. Lisp has been a compiled language for *decades*. If you >>>>look at the ANSI Common Lisp standard (from 1991, if I recall correctly), >>>>you will see that the standard even *requires* a compiler. There is >>>>one implementation (CLISP) which compiles only to bytecode, all other >>>>major Lisp implementations have compiled to machine code since a very >>>>long time. >>>> >>>>>Of >>>>>course, so was BASIC. Yet there were basic compilers as well. My primary point >>>>>was speed. Lisp is slow. It always was slow. It always will be slow. >>>> >>>>It *isn't* necessarily slow. I have even provided one data point (from >>>>1999, just two years after your statement was written) to illustrate that >>>>Lisp in practice often enables you to write *faster* programs in *less* >>>>time compared to C/C++. >>> >>>Personally, I would take _any_ challenge to compete with a lisp program, when >>>the goal is performance. Granted, high-level languages may reduce the >>>_development_ time. All the previous languages I have mentioned come to mind, >>>from Prolog, to APL, to Snobol. But when execution speed is the issue, I'll >>>take C _every_ time, and if I were unable to beat a lisp program at speed, for >>>the same functionality, I'd probably turn in my coding pad. :) >>> >>>Just as surely as I would take assembly over C if speed were the ultimate goal, >>>no matter how good the C optimizer is. A bad programmer can write bad C code. >>>A programmer that is not familiar with a computer (take a Cray) will probably >>>get beaten by the optimizer. But for a human that knows the architecture, I'll >>>take the lowest-level language every time, when raw NPS or whatever is the goal. >> >>The key point is the "knows the architecture" part. Just like an assembly >>language program doesn't automatically run faster than a C program just >>because it is written in assembly language, a C program doesn't automatically >>run faster than a Lisp program just because it is written in C. In both >>cases, you need some in-depth knowledge of the computer hardware to take >>advantage of the low-level features of C or assembly language. In both >>cases, the performance gain given by the lowest-level language isn't >>extremely big. Given optimizing compilers of the same quality, the >>performance difference between assembly language and C is probably >>comparable to the difference between C and Lisp. > >Though i love Hyatt crawling over the floor, i have to admit that in this case >he must be crawling laughing for your idiocy here. > >Let's start the functional programming subject. > >I wrote a checkersprogram in a functional language. It was called gofer >(developed at university amsterdam). Deliberately i didn't use Haskell features >because haskell is in fact imperative and that would defeat the goal. > >The checkers program using lazy evaluation and such high level language stuff, >was searching at 2 nodes a second. > >It took me a week or 2 to make and optimize the gofer program. > >Then i converted that by hand into a C program. That took 1 day and it was >10000-20000 times faster. Of course interpreted. > >When compiled the C program was factor 50-100 faster. > >Functional programming languages would be great to parse anything and easy to >use. > >Well after writing a checkersprogram i realized at least 2 of its disadvantages. >Not only it's dead slow but also you can only make small functions. Have you >ever written a serious application in LISP? > >I doubt it. > >Really i do. I know nothing about lisp but Tord wrote a complicated chess program in C and he defines himself as better in lisp than in C so I guess he wrote more serious application than his chess program in lisp. Uri
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