Re: [Caml-list] Rule based language [was: productivity improvement]

[Oleg <oleg_inconnu@myrealbox.com>]

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On Sunday 21 July 2002 09:00 am, Alessandro Baretta wrote:
> Oleg wrote:
> > Alex,
> >
> > This looks pretty simple. What makes you think the program is a
> > compelling evidence of O'Caml superior productivity?
>
> 197 lines of code, including whitespace and commments. I
> think it is a pretty clear example of how you can write cool
> software in O'Caml in a very short time. If you had not been
> "lazy", as you said, and had tried implementing the same
> language in C++, I strongly doubt you could have written a
> more compact source.


109 LOC in C++ counting blank lines and lines containing a single '}'. See 
atttached files.

A few notes about the differences between your O'Caml program and my C++ 
program: 

1) I'm not using Yacc or Lex for parsing, because I'm not familiar with these 
tools, so ugly parsing takes up most of those 109 LOC (Parsing things is 
peripheral to my professional interests right now. I don't write compilers)

2) I decided not to implement the "simple" keyword, because I did not 
understand what it was supposed to mean (a depth limit on deduction, I'm 
guessing, but what for?)

3) Your program fails to imlement multi-token post-conditions in rules and 
mutli-token goals (as described in your formal language specification)

4) The algorithms are different I think, resulting in, for example, about 
200x speed improvement for the attached test.input file on my P3-800MHz 
(g++-3.0 vs ocamlopt) (The output is identical).  The O'Caml program 
convergence seems to be quite unstable.  Sometimes it is as fast or even 
faster than the C++ program. 

I can see how the same algorithm can be implemented in ~100 LOC of O'Caml 
too. However, IMO as this and the previous examples show, reports about 
extreme LOC ratios are premature.

Cheers,
Oleg

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