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Subject: Re: The Glory that is ML (long and not for the faint of heart)

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 14:56:38 08/01/03

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On August 01, 2003 at 08:43:21, Anthony Cozzie wrote:

>ML was developed to write compliers in.  Ocaml is the french version; Ocaml is
>generally considered to be about 1.5x as slow as 'C' code (do a search on
>"programming languages shootout").

http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/craps.shtml

I remember OCaml from this website, and I didn't recall it being 1.5x as slow as
C, so I went back and looked, and it isn't 1.5x as slow, but rather it is almost
exactly the same speed as C code compiled with gcc.

Here's a breakdown:

Of the top 4, looks like meta languages do rather well...

Language   Implementation   Score
C          gcc              752
Ocaml      ocaml            751
SML        mlton            751
C++        g++              743

I think that being behind gcc by 1 point and ahead of g++ by 8 points doesn't
qualify as 1.5x slower. Granted this one site may not be the most accurate
comparison, and there are faster C/C++ compilers than gcc/g++, but I'd say that
since SML and OCaml are right there in the middle of gcc and g++, they might
work for chess programs.

Also worth noting is that while OCaml is right there with gcc/g++ in the CPU
rankings, it absolutely blows both of them out of the water in the lines of code
rankings. Both implementations of OCaml are ranks 1 and 2. g++ is at rank 17,
and gcc is at 24. That indicates better maintainability, and at almost no speed
loss, it might be well worth the time to look into.




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