On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:16:10 -0700, Adam Skutt wrote: > On Apr 26, 7:33 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve > +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: >> On Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:22:55 -0700, Adam Skutt wrote: >> > I often wonder what the world would be like if Python, C#, and Java >> > embraced value types more, and had better support for pure functions. >> >> They would be slower, require more memory, > > Funny, Haskell frequently beats C in both categories.
We've both been guilty of this, but don't confuse a language implementation with a language. Haskell and C are languages, which in a sense are like Platonic ideals: languages specify behaviour and semantics, but have no costs. When talking about resource usage, you need to talk about concrete implementations of concrete tests, not hand-wavy "language X is faster". And I'm afraid that your claim of Haskell frequently beating C doesn't stand up to scrutiny. http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=ghc&lang2=gcc I'm seeing code generated by the Haskell GHC compiler being 2-4 times slower than code from the C gcc compiler, and on average using 2-3 times as much memory (and as much as 7 times). Feel free to find your own set of benchmarks that show the opposite. I'd be interested to see under what conditions Haskell might be faster than C. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
