From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: toby@telegraphics.com.au (Toby Thain)
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2018 18:18:28 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] lisp challenge
In-Reply-To: <8a4ac448-9ed2-016a-6440-33597e36915d@kilonet.net>
References: <20180216210114.GA27574@mcvoy.com>
 <20180216220524.3B9A4156E80B@mail.bitblocks.com>
 <20180216222835.GC27574@mcvoy.com>
 <8a4ac448-9ed2-016a-6440-33597e36915d@kilonet.net>
Message-ID: <1982c016-3eb6-cadd-75e7-80d2a081ac07@telegraphics.com.au>

On 2018-02-16 5:56 PM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Has ANY language (except assembler) EVER outperformed C in a big way?
> 
> Give or take any optimizations that may be done by either?
> 


As Tim wisely pointed out, performance isn't a property of a language,
but a program, so the idea that C is some kind of untouchable ultimate
in speed makes no sense. There are aspects of its design that militate
_against_ performance and preclude optimisations that are possible in
other languages.

Therefore nobody should be shocked that programs in other languages
certainly _have_ beaten C for the same tasks. An illuminating example is
the Haskell Mio system which has benchmarked to outperform C web
servers. Expect more progress from that direction.

--Toby