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Which programming languages are the fastest?
shootout.alioth.debian.org
Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(
I seem to remember that at one point, Pypy, Luajit and perhaps a Ruby interpreter were removed from the races. Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pypy/7303/focus=73...
I seem to remember that at one point, Pypy, Luajit and perhaps a Ruby interpreter were removed from the races. Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(
The help page has your answer, anyway. "Because I want to do fewer chores not more!" http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/help.php
Which begs the question - aside from macho bragging rights, exactly what good is this kind of information?
Assume I did have a specific problem case for which performance in terms of memory, time or LoC mattered. As a first step, I'd write a specific benchmarkable implementation of my own problem (or one very like it.) Then I'd need to profile and optimise that implementation in my chosen language(s), as well as stop and think laterally about ways I might be able to optimise around that specific problem.
This is all assuming I'm working on a greenfields project where I have absolute free choice of language & runtime environment. Which happens for my personal projects, but never yet for a professional one.
Not to mention that in all other cases apart from this hypothetical where performance matters, I would take the most human-readable program over the most fast, lean or concise one.
Long story short, at no point can I see myself stopping and saying to myself. "You know what I need now? I need to see which programming language can generate a Mandelbrot set bitmap with the smallest memory footprint, without using any 'unfair' optimisation techniques."
As the page says, "No. Which programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?" Which begs the question - aside from macho bragging rights, exactly what good is this kind of information? Assume I did have a specific problem case for which performance in terms of memory, time or LoC mattered. As a first step, I'd write a specific benchmarkable implementation of my own problem (or one very like…
As the page says, "No. Which programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?" Which begs the question - aside from macho bragging rights, exactly what good is this kind of information? Assume I did have a specific problem case for which performance in terms of memory, time or LoC mattered. As a first step, I'd write a specific benchmarkable implementation of my own problem (or one very like…
A while back, I wrote a program to solve a puzzle. The more complex the puzzle, the longer it took to solve. Today, I might come up with a better algorithm, but back then, all I could find was a brute-force approach. The most complex puzzle I had seen at the time was taking hours to run.
The program was written in VB6, and it was just wasn't mean for CPU-intensive programs like that. If I were to write that program again today, I'd be looking at optimizing the code for speed, starting with the language.
So yes, the question -does- matter. Sometimes.
I seem to remember that at one point, Pypy, Luajit and perhaps a Ruby interpreter were removed from the races. Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(
The benchmark game now only shows one implementation per language. The reasons aren't very satisfying IMO, but see this thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pypy/7303/focus=73...
As the page says, "No. Which programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?" Which begs the question - aside from macho bragging rights, exactly what good is this kind of information? Assume I did have a specific problem case for which performance in terms of memory, time or LoC mattered. As a first step, I'd write a specific benchmarkable implementation of my own problem (or one very like…
Exactly, I can't believe (what seems like a) majority of developers are still talking about language performance (and optimization). It matters for a small subsegment of our industry. The rest, speed/cost to implement and maintain far outweigh raw language performance.
You have to optimise to your use case, not some arbitrary general use case like "render a Mandelbrot set" or "calculate pi". If I have a slow On^2 Erlang algorithm, then I'm a lot better off looking at ways to rewrite it as Olog(n) instead of scrapping Erlang and moving to Java because it had a better score on the programming language shootout.
I seem to remember that at one point, Pypy, Luajit and perhaps a Ruby interpreter were removed from the races. Anyone have any details on why that happened? These destroyed my ability to link to the shootout as data for showing that languages don't matter as much as implementations do, a nuance many newbies miss :(
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/compare.php?lang=cint
But let's note that here CINT is only being used as a C interpreter but a CINT script can call compiled classes/functions and compiled code can make callbacks to CINT interpreted functions - which I'm sure you understand would make it a lot faster.