From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from mail3-relais-sop.national.inria.fr (mail3-relais-sop.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.104]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21042BBAF for ; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:56:01 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AlwEAFeS6kyA+kY9hWdsb2JhbACiahUBAQEKCwoFEyK1HIhphUsEil4 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.59,239,1288566000"; d="scan'208";a="67857174" Received: from old-delphi.eng.unimelb.edu.au ([128.250.70.61]) by mail3-smtp-sop.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 23 Nov 2010 00:55:41 +0100 Received: by old-delphi (Postfix, from userid 5001) id 56952638902; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:39 +1100 (EST) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.7-deb3 (2006-10-05) on old-delphi.eng.unimelb.edu.au X-Spam-Level: Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au [128.250.1.22]) by old-delphi (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19F73638901; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:38 +1100 (EST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au with ESMTP id oAMNtbZj022858; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:38 +1100 (EST) Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with LMTP id 2gkF-O9nb3UW; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:36 +1100 (EST) Received: from mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au with ESMTP id oAMNtVHR022828; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:31 +1100 (EST) Received: (from jws@localhost) by mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au (8.13.8+Sun/8.13.8/Submit) id oAMNtVTn022826; Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:31 +1100 (EST) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:55:31 +1100 From: Jeff Schultz To: Oliver Bandel Cc: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Is OCaml fast? Message-ID: <20101122235531.GA12662@mulga.csse.unimelb.edu.au> References: <1290434674.16005.354.camel@thinkpad> <20101122180203.2126497sau3zukgb@webmail.in-berlin.de> <20101122182338.3867381u5h2p4f8a@webmail.in-berlin.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20101122182338.3867381u5h2p4f8a@webmail.in-berlin.de> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-09) X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 0100,:01 bandel:01 ocaml:01 defaults:01 languages':01 expressivity:01 wrote:01 oliver:01 caml-list:01 slower:02 variables:02 shootout:02 shootout:02 misleading:03 On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 06:23:38PM +0100, Oliver Bandel wrote: > ...looks like they are biased... > .... not that we are not ;) > To reject environment variables, I can see as acceptable in this case, > but rejecting the GC-stuff does not make sense, because, as just mentioned, > it is avalable by the programmer from within the code. I haven't looked at the "benchmark game" or its predecessor for many years, but all this really says is that the programs it measures are sufficiently unlike real applications that the OCaml developers haven't been tempted to tune the GC defaults for them. The conclusion to draw would be that the shootout results are a poor, and probably misleading, evidence base for selecting a programming language for execution time performance. Measured programming language implementation performance gets faster or slower over the years due to its own rule changes and language and library implementation changes, but I doubt that this conclusion changes much ;-) The one thing the shootout programs are useful for is to get a feel for a variety of different languages' expressivity for a common set of "small" problems. Jeff Schultz