Re: C under Lua

[Mike Pall <mikelu-0602@...>]

Hi,

Chris <coderight@...> wrote:
> Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the new stuff can be useful and everyone
> involved has the best intentions.  It just seems like it has taken what was
> a simple, neat, KISS type thing and turned it into a bloated unreliable mess
> with huge gaping missing parts.

It feels very well ordered to me. Phasing out the micro-benchmarks
which conveyed very little meaning in practice was a good move IMHO.
The shootout is in a much better shape than a year ago.

I wrote/tuned almost all of the Lua benchmarks that are there now.
This wasn't "hello world" #10. But it wasn't rocket science either.
The rules are the same for all languages. I didn't make them. I can't
complain.

> Just looking at the results now there is a
> strong bias towards non-conventional languages.

Really? I don't think so. The old shootout compared even more
languages.

If you only want to compare what's en vogue now: you're welcome.
Just ignore the other entries. There are side-by-side comparisons,
too.

> Except in a few specialized
> cases, the old standards like C and FORTRAN should set the marks to beat.
> I don't see that in the current results.

What makes you so sure that C and Fortran are the best languages
for most problems? What makes you so sure their compilers generate
the best machine code for most problems? "Common knowledge"?

I can assure you the C entries are amongst the most tuned ones.
C has the highest overall score if you look only at CPU time.
But it still doesn't win in all cases. And it doesn't have the
most elegant solutions, too.

Look closer and you'll be surprised. This is one important lesson
from the shootout: don't trust your prejudices about computer
languages.

And CPU time isn't everything. LOC or other souce code complexity
measures are relevant for programmer productivity i.e. money. Next
time you have to defend yourself for writing something in a strange
language (such as Lua?) show your boss the comparison chart and let
her/him do the math.

[But I guess this is a bit off-topic for the Lua list now.]

Bye,
     Mike