Re: Why such poor recursive behaviour?

#1 07-31-2008, 05:34 AM

On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 01:01 -0700, namekuseijin wrote:
> I wonder why most functional programming languages fail so badly at
> what should be one of their primary main strengths: recursive
> functions.
>
> In the well-known benchmarking game called "The computer game
> shootout", most such languages fail miserably in the face of blazing
> fast imperative code during the benchmarking of recursive functions
> such as ackermann or fibonacci:
>
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp...cursiveâŒ©=all
>
> The best is clean, only 1.6 slower than gcc C.
>
> The chart:
> 1.6 Clean
> 3.2 OCaml (just behind Fortran and Java!)
> 3.3 F# (running in mono)
> 3.4 SML on MLton (just after FreeBasic!)
> 3.4 Haskell GHC (just after Java on gcj! almost a tie-in)
> 3.6 CL on SBCL (almost as good as compiled lazy static Haskell)
> 3.7 Scheme on Chicken (just after sbcl)
> 4.0 SML/NJ (just after C# on mono)
> 4.6 Scheme on Ikarus (just after Java -client!)
> 8.1 Scheme PLT (just after Fortran, again)
>
> Well, that's about it.
>
> I know in the grand scheme of things, such timings are not that bad,
> not orders of magnitude slower like some of the dynamic scripting
> stinkers in the bottom, specially in the face of such classy and easy
> syntax and semantics adding to programmer productivity. Still, kind
> of a let down, like buying a Playstation 3 and waiting for a killer
> app that never comes...

Killer applications for PS3? Sounds like you should have bought a PC.

(GTA4 is cool though)

> Any thoughts?

None. Too busy coding Lisp.

...and scalability is solved elsewhere, in higher level places. That's
why Google uses Python btw.. Gotta be a fast programmer to keep up with
the amount of changes needed as things start calling for better
scalability. C doesn't help here.

Try CFFI if you need low-level speed and you're sure Lisp lacks this (it
usually doesn't; you're just doing things wrong and need to solve the
high-level problem differently):

http://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/

...there; you win. Lisp .. and .. C; at the same time. Now go code
something.

--
Lars Rune NÃ¸stdal
http://nostdal.org/

#2 07-31-2008, 02:18 PM

On 31 jul, 06:34, Lars Rune Nøstdal <larsnost...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Killer applications for PS3? Sounds like you should have bought a PC.

I don't have a PS3, though I suspect it's killerapp came and gone
without further ado: MGS4.

> ..and scalability is solved elsewhere, in higher level places.

Yes, most certainly. And I know being 5x slower than C ain't that
bad, it's just kind of a let down in this particular benchmark.

> That's
> why Google uses Python btw..

In small places, afaik.

> Try CFFI if you need low-level speed and you're sure Lisp lacks this

FFI is nice for providing glue code to interface with native
libraries. Not really that much of an option for actual application
development, because you're not coding HighLevelLanguage nor C, but a
verbose mix of the 2 that sounds and reads lame. I'd rather just code
in C or be a little slower in HighLevelLanguage.

Thread Tools
Show Printable Version Email this Page
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode