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 mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr (mail1-relais-roc.national.inria.fr [192.134.164.82]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id E2C43BBAF for ; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 22:04:14 +0100 (CET) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AjsBAAYN7UxRZ90wkWdsb2JhbACjCRUBAQEBCQsKBxEDH75qhUcEimA X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.59,249,1288566000"; d="scan'208";a="89297956" Received: from mtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com ([81.103.221.48]) by mail1-smtp-roc.national.inria.fr with ESMTP; 24 Nov 2010 22:04:14 +0100 Received: from aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com ([81.103.221.35]) by mtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com (InterMail vM.7.08.04.00 201-2186-134-20080326) with ESMTP id <20101124210414.KVPE19887.mtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com>; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:04:14 +0000 Received: from romulus.metastack.com ([81.102.132.77]) by aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com (InterMail vG.3.00.04.00 201-2196-133-20080908) with ESMTP id <20101124210413.LFKC25656.aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@romulus.metastack.com>; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:04:13 +0000 Received: from remus.metastack.local ([172.16.0.1]) by romulus.metastack.com (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id oAOL495C020665 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=FAIL); Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:04:10 GMT Received: from Remus.metastack.local ([fe80::547c:3c42:e1da:eda2]) by Remus.metastack.local ([fe80::547c:3c42:e1da:eda2%11]) with mapi; Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:01:31 +0000 From: David Allsopp To: Isaac Gouy , "caml-list@inria.fr" Subject: RE: [Caml-list] Re: Is OCaml fast? Thread-Topic: [Caml-list] Re: Is OCaml fast? Thread-Index: AQHLjAajh1mVDDPoXU2AG/HBg/dACpOBFnig Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:59:42 +0000 Message-ID: References: In-Reply-To: Accept-Language: en-GB, en-US Content-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 Organization: MetaStack Solutions Ltd. X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.65 on 81.102.132.77 X-Cloudmark-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=JvdXmxIgLJv2/GthKqHpGJEEHukvLcvELVXUanXFreg= c=1 sm=0 a=c6B3cic8UXIA:10 a=kj9zAlcOel0A:10 a=xqWC_Br6kY4A:10 a=SGJpDYsEAAAA:8 a=xNf9USuDAAAA:8 a=qgq7-hGqZzgO8W-7ik4A:9 a=qfrZuNdcu6nmm_g9jcUA:7 a=XXnwBW0WsmBKNkDgKaXpj4B8aBUA:4 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 a=tfMKtesA_YMA:10 a=lagB2ffcSVvtFBsb:21 a=ZKPA8xX7_Y4zLkJY:21 a=HpAAvcLHHh0Zw7uRqdWCyQ==:117 X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 language's:01 erroneously:01 normalized:01 language's:01 subjective:01 abbreviation:01 wrote:01 graph:01 graph:01 caml-list:01 writes:01 measurements:01 shootout:02 shootout:02 Isaac Gouy wrote: > David Allsopp metastack.com> writes: >=20 > -snip- > > Reducing an entire programming language's strengths (or > > weaknesses!) to a single number is just not really realistic - the > > truth is more complex than one single-precision floating point=20 > > number (or even an array of them) can describe. (NB. The shootout > > doesn't claim that the final ranking displayed is anything other than > > a score of how well the languages did > > at the various benchmarks given - but a graph like that is easy to > > interpret erroneously in that way) > -snip- >=20 > That summary page >=20 > > > (http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/which-programming-languages-a > > > re- > > > fastest.php) >=20 > shows box plots (quartiles, outliers, median) of the normalized timing > measurements for each of the tasks, for each of the language > implementations. >=20 > A graph like that shows some of those language implementations are very > fast for some benchmark programs and very slow for others. I'm not sure I disputed that anywhere, in fact I think if anything implicit= ly agreed with it... > To characterize that as "reducing an entire programming language's > strengths (or weaknesses!) to a single number" seems kind-of misleading. I'm not clear how you extracted that from what I said which was that reduci= ng a programming language to a single number (or three numbers, if you want= bars) is not a good summary of the *total* strengths of that programming l= anguage. I then went on to stress that the combined results from the shooto= ut don't claim to do that, they simply show an interpretation of the combin= ed results from the different benchmarks. My attempt at a point was that ranking programming languages (that's just "= programming languages" not "execution speed of programming languages") is a= largely futile activity, because it's just too subjective and hard to quan= tify in a rigorous manner, and importantly that the shootout doesn't try to= do that. The relevance and value of that point to Thanassis' original ques= tion is for him to decide... > Especially when the question that page answers is stated 3 times - "Which > programming language implementations have the fastest benchmark programs?= " Which part of my statement "The shootout doesn't claim that the final ranki= ng displayed is anything other than a score of how well the languages did a= t the various benchmarks given" (prefixed with the Latin abbreviation for "= Note well") caused you to need to write this? David