Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)

thenewstack.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 267 posts

Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)

#4

Post by kbenson »

Interesting results, but I think the farther you go down the list the more the fact that you're using the Computer Language Benchmark Game affects what you're seeing, as not all languages get the same attention.

For example, Javascript and Typescript. Theoretically, I would assume those to be very close, since one compiles to the other. And for memory usage, they are very close. But for running time, Typescript is an order of magnitude slower. That looks suspiciously like entirely different algorithms were used in each implementation (with one being obviously superior in terms of performance), and if that's happening in this specific case, where else is it also causing problems in the analysis?

Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)

#5

Post by gameswithgo »

kbenson wrote: post #4

Interesting results, but I think the farther you go down the list the more the fact that you're using the Computer Language Benchmark Game affects what you're seeing, as not all languages get the same attention. For example, Javascript and Typescript. Theoretically, I would assume those to be very close, since one compiles to the other. And for memory usage, they are very close. But for running time, Typescript is an…

submit a better implementation. it is not possible for any one entity to produce optimal implementations for many languages, it is up to us. or, if you dont like their rules, make your own benchmark system with new rules.

Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)

#8

Post by kissgyorgy »

Not sure how serious they think this is, and how much is this rather a joke. If it's not a joke, they clearly not see the big picture. For example if you can write a software in a higher level language in a fraction of the time which will spare energy somewhere else in the world, it will use less electricity overall.

Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)

#9

Post by mftrhu »

mtreis86 wrote: post #2

Which lisp? Those numbers don't seem right from my experience with SBCL.

The data for the paper the article talks about is online [1], and it says [2] that the benchmarks are "implemented in 28 different languages (exactly as taken from the Computer Language Benchmark Game)".

The LISP evaluated by the Benchmark Game - and, apparently, this paper - is indeed SBCL [3], which seems about on par with Java.

“Lisp, on average, consumes 2.27x more energy (131.34J) than C, while taking 2.44x more time to execute (4926.99ms), and 1.92x more memory (126.64Mb) needed when compared to Pascal.”

[1] https://sites.google.com/view/energy-efficiency-languages/ho...

[2] https://github.com/greensoftwarelab/Energy-Languages

[3] https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/...

Post reply on HN