On 05/16/2012 09:02 PM, Gregg Lebovitz wrote:

Isaac,

I was looking at the debian coding contest benchmarks referenced by others in this discussion. All of the benchmarks algorithms, appear to be short computationally intensive programs with a fairly low level of abstraction.

In almost all examples, the requirement says: you must implement the X functions as implemented in Java, or C#, or C++. The k-nucleotide even specifies a requirement to use an update a hash-table.

I wonder if someone here could come up with a set of benchmarks that would out perform C++.

That's easy:

let ones = 1 : ones take 5 ones [1,1,1,1,1]

I'm not sure how much C++ code you'd have to write to produce the correct answer without butchering the intent too much, but the naïve translation to C++ loops infinitely. Obviously Haskell is infintely better than C++!11111oneone!

Interesting that you would focus on this one comment in my post and not comment on one on countering the benchmarks with a new criteria for comparing languages.

Comparing languages is a highly non-trivial matter involving various disciplines (including various squidgy ones) and rarely makes sense without a very specific context for comparison. So the short answer is: mu. Discovering the long answer requires a lifetime or more of research and may not actually result in an answer. Regards,

In a lecture today I presented (for quite other reasons) a simple combinatorial enumeration problem where the difference between two algorithms was far larger than any plausible difference between programming languages. If a programming language makes it easier to explore high level alternative algorithms, you may very easily end up with faster programs in a "slower" language. (Sorry about the very long line: broken return key.)

On 5/16/12 3:57 PM, Bardur Arantsson wrote:

Comparing languages is a highly non-trivial matter involving various disciplines (including various squidgy ones) and rarely makes sense without a very specific context for comparison.

Exactly. That's what I was trying to get at re the problems of comparing Haskell to C++ (or indeed any pair of dissimilar languages). A legitimate comparison will involve far more than microbenchmarks, but then a legitimate comparison must always have a specific focus and context in order to be able to say anything interesting. The problems I see in language comparisons is that by and large they tend not to have any such focus[1], and consequently they shed little light on how the languages compare and shed a bit of darkness by serving only to confirm initial biases. [1] A nice counter-example to this trend are papers like: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/papers/modules-classes.pdf There was another one comparing the expressivity of Java-style polymorphism vs Haskell-style polymorphism, based on an analysis of in-the-wild code; but I can't seem to pull it up at the moment. -- Live well, ~wren

Isaac, I see your point. Probably I shouldn't have made that assertion given my limited understanding of the benchmarks. I want to thank you for your kind and gentle way of pointing this out to me. I feel very welcomed and encourage. I still plan to work on the performance paper with the help of others on this list. I look forward to your support and constructive feedback. Gregg On 5/16/2012 6:59 PM, Isaac Gouy wrote:

-snip-

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Interesting that you would focus on this one comment in my post and not comment on one on countering the benchmarks with a new criteria for comparing languages. Too obvious to be interesting.

Interesting that you haven't said how you know they are "designed to favor imperative languages" ;-)

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Isaac, I understand. Thank you. I will be more careful about my wording in the future. I really do appreciate your taking the time to point this out to me. I am here to learn and help where I can. Gregg On 5/17/2012 11:25 AM, Isaac Gouy wrote:

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From: Gregg Lebovitz Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:50 AMI look forward to Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Can Haskell outperform C++?

Isaac,

I see your point. Probably I shouldn't have made that assertion given my limited understanding of the benchmarks. I want to thank you for your kind and gentle way of pointing this out to me. I feel very welcomed and encourage.

I still plan to work on the performance paper with the help of others on this list. I look forward to your support and constructive feedback.

Gregg

Gregg,

You wrote that you were looking at the benchmarks and then made a definite assertion about what was shown on the website. Unsuspecting readers would assume that you were truthfully reporting what you saw on the website.

I cannot explain to them why you made an assertion which could be seen not to be true, simply by looking at the benchmarks game website.

best wishes, Isaac

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