Nick Apperson wrote: > WARNING: This digresses into a rant by the end... You've been warned. > > But I'll be damned if Java takes over the world because there are > programmers that don't know when they need to use garbage collection. > If you can't avoid memory leaks, fine, don't use C++ or C, but don't > blame the language. You could use garbage collection if you need it; > don't make us all stoop to your level of competency and don't try and > claim that your language is just as fast when it isn't. Java programmers seem to be very intent on claiming Java is fast. But John Tromp has a real, non-trivial program that does run pretty quickly. He wrote 2 versions, 1 for C and 1 for Java. This is connect-4 solver.
I didn't look real hard at the code, but I did take a quick glance. I noticed something right away that diminishes C, but I don't really know how much. When you run his code on a 32 bit processor, he heavily makes use of 64 bit integers. This will have the effect of minimizing the relative slowdown due to the Java byte code interpreter, because more work will be done natively. Manipulating 64 bit values in Java is like calling fat little C routines (compared to doing this with 32 bit variables which would favor C more on 32 bit OS.) I think the right way to do benchmarks is to create some non-trivial benchmark such as John's, then get experts in each language to compete - but with fairly strict rules about how the job is to be done. But even this can get tricky. You would have to forbid using library routines that do most of the work for you, writing assembly code, etc. You would also have to look at how the job was being done and allow the respective teams to use each others ideas so that it doesn't turn out that one team just happened to be using a more efficient algorithm. For instance with a solver like connect-4, how you do move ordering would have a lot to do with how fast the benchmark runs. So if I were doing a connect-4 solver in C, I might very well use 32 bit integers. We could re-check John's code on a 64 bit machine to see if this is much of deal. I assume Java will take advantage of 64 bit architecture and use 64 bit integers better on a 64 bit machine? - Don > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
