Assembly language is the lower bound here. This is a 100% correct fact that nothing can use less energy than assembly language. No such statement can be made about other languages.
Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
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Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#12Not 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.
i suppose every attempt to figure out which is the best text editor, unix-like os, programming language etc is even more futile than most human endeavor :)
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#13Interesting 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.
I don't use Typescript, and use Javascript only for what I have to. I don't care about the ranking of either of them, I'm just pointing out a possible flaw in the methodology that should be taken into account when looking at the numbers presented, and what I suspect is a concrete example of that.
This also isn't a criticism of the benchmark game, it's well known that not every implementation is equivalent in the time and effort put into optimizing it. It serves its purpose about as well as can be expected. Unfortunately, using it as the base of further calculations can lead to some of the known quirks of the benchmarks being exaggerated into results that are not always obviously an artifact of the underlying system, as I suspect this is. Making that obvious by pointing it out can be useful.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#14Interesting 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…
That’s an interesting discrepancy, I might have had the same gut reaction. But you’re using that assumption to cast slippery-slope doubt on the whole project without knowing anything specific. It’s possible you’re right, but maybe find out which algorithms are being used first? Perhaps there is a reason that TypeScript actually is an order of magnitude slower than JavaScript. The Benchmark Game project was specifically set up to allow people to scrutinize the algorithms used and make fair comparisons, so it might be unwise to start with the assumption that the most basic aspect of the project failed spectacularly and that something really obviously stupid and easy to fix is happening. I am at least giving benefit of the doubt and wondering what might be wrong with TypeScript. It’s not implausible since other languages take just as long.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#15Not 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.
It depends. If you're writing a math kernel that will be deployed to a billion IoT devices each with a lifetime of 10 years, you may want to spend some more developer time to shave a few cycles in assembly language. If you're writing some single-use script to automate a single job, do it in the easiest high level language with the library support that you need.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#16Interesting 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…
Javascript in many cases runs on v8 which is a just in time compiler. Just in time compilers provide substantial performance benefits for lines of code executed multiple times. Perhaps v8 team (google) doesn't support typescript (microsoft). https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2754...
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#17Not sure what to make of this research. It's not like I can switch out JS in favor of these other languages (many of which are compiled binaries) in my web apps. The performance of for example web servers written in the different languages entirely would seem more interesting to compare.
The JS/TS comparison was directly fishy. I found no mention in the paper of how they managed to "run" the tasks in Typescript, which AFAIK is not possible, or at least not how one would do it in a real life.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#18Not 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.
How does less dev time save energy “somewhere else in the world”?
Google & AWS pay money to develop & acquire technologies that save energy because of their scale. The energy used in dev is scratch compared to the energy used to run programs at scale. Google, for example, has a PHP compiler that makes all PHP web pages execute in a fraction of the energy usage of running the PHP interpreter.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#19Interesting 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…
That’s an interesting discrepancy, I might have had the same gut reaction. But you’re using that assumption to cast slippery-slope doubt on the whole project without knowing anything specific. It’s possible you’re right, but maybe find out which algorithms are being used first? Perhaps there is a reason that TypeScript actually is an order of magnitude slower than JavaScript. The Benchmark Game project was specifical…
You can write literally any JavaScript program with TypeScript (falling back to the `any` type if you really need to), so this doesn't really work in this case.
Also, typical TypeScript programs are faster than typical JavaScript programs, because JavaScript JITs like predictable object shapes and monomorphic functions for the same reasons that other language implementations require them. Libraries like lodash and bluebird take advantage of this fact without using TypeScript, but TypeScript steers you towards these patterns.
Re: Which Programming Languages Use the Least Electricity? (2018)
#20Interesting 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…
Javascript in many cases runs on v8 which is a just in time compiler. Just in time compilers provide substantial performance benefits for lines of code executed multiple times. Perhaps v8 team (google) doesn't support typescript (microsoft). https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2754...
No one executes TypeScript directly... It's a language that compiles to JS, which can then be run using V8 among others.