Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 12:06:00 08/13/04
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On August 13, 2004 at 11:50:13, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >There are Fortran -> C compilers. There are C++ -> C compilers. I'm fairly >sure there are ML -> C compilers. So worst case, you can generate C code that >is just as fast as ML. Not necessarily. Suppose language X makes certain guarantees that C does not. The language X optimizer may produce faster code. Using an X-to-C compiler may even produce slower code since there are different guarantees. It's the same concept that explains why Fortran is faster than C for some purposes. Sometimes the C compiler can't guarantee that two pointers don't point to the same data. If another language makes such a guarantee, it can do further optimization that the C optimizer might not be able to do. My only point is: It's possible. Claiming "always", "impossible", "never", and so on is making a significant claim, and so far I haven't seen any arguments that would convince me that nothing can ever be faster than C because C is the closest to assembly. Maybe it's true 99% of the time, and I wouldn't dispute that, but that wasn't the initial claim.
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