On Aug 11, 2009, at 8:19 PM, Daniel Lyons wrote: >> Perf bottlenecks are being addresses in Clojure already but not a >> the expense of expressiveness. >> And that is perfectly fine... > > > I agree completely with everything you're saying, and I too find > fft1976's obsession hard to relate to. But I think that one problem > with many modern languages is that the implementors aren't concerned > with performance beyond a certain level of practicality. There are > people out there like fft1976 who are motivated to squeeze the most > out, and the theory for making highly-optimizing compilers for > functional languages is also well-researched at this point. > Haskell's GHC implementation, for example, has benefitted > tremendously from having a team of implementors who went way beyond > ordinary practicality for compiler optimization.
I'm certain things like this are coming. The notion of clojure-in- clojure, and the potential of being able to target native platforms / C source would be a huge boon for those building the most demanding of applications. But, and I know you weren't trying to say that they're comparable, GHC was started *20 years ago*; clojure was publicly released *last year* IIRC. There's lots of room to grow, but also lots of work to be done by those who know how to do it (and, unfortunately, I'm not one of them). > So consider this my vote for fft1976's involvement in adding new > optimizations to the compiler. I agree with him that unadorned > functional code should perform well, but I don't have the motivation > or the skills to improve it. If he does—and I suspect so—then I hope > we can maintain a dispassionate eye towards the issue of performance > and perhaps improve it rather than driving off the meticulous souls > who have the combination of skills and inclination to do something > about it. This is what seems to me to have happened with Ruby and > various other high level languages with mediocre performance. I hope fft1976 becomes clojure's button-man for hardcore performance optimization -- and I hope another dozen similarly-motivated fellows are right behind him. This community has been nothing if not welcoming (probably the warmest, most helpful programming community I've ever encountered), and I hope no one feels otherwise. Cheers, - Chas --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
