[ocaml-biz] strategy bullet point list

[Brian Hurt]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, William D. Neumann wrote:

> On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> 
> Two minor points:
> 
> > - C++ is neither high level nor type safe.  Java and C# do not offer
> > performance, and OCaml is better at HLL features and type safety.
> 
> I really know jack about C#, so there may be a simple, valid counterpoint, 
> but if one looks at the recently revived language shootout 
> <http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/index.php>, C# ranks ahead of OCaml in 
> raw speed.  So if we're going to claim that C# does not offer performance, 
> we're going to have to come up with a valid explanation of why it ranks 
> ahead of OCaml on that scorecard...

Well, first of all, no one is optimizing the Ocaml code- while other
languages are getting optimized.  From my following of the mailing list,
C++ and C# are especially active.  Second, I'm wondering how csharp got a
score of 39.9, when the next non-natively-compiled language (Java/Kaffe)  
came in 10 steps and 13.1 points.  Sun's Java is another 4 steps and 0.5 
points down from Kaffe.  I think the question is not "why is Ocaml lower 
than C#", the question is "why is C# so much higher performance than Java, 
Ocaml byte code, and other byte code interpreted languages?"

I suspect that some proscribed optimization is being performed- like the 
environment has noticed that results are simply be thrown away, and thus 
it isn't computing them.  I don't know this for sure, but I suspect it.

My other answer to that is:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/craps.php?xcpu=0&xmem=1&xloc=0&ackermann=1&ary=3&echo=5&except=1&fibo=2&hash=1&hash2=4&heapsort=4&hello=1&lists=3&matrix=3&methcall=5&moments=2&nestedloop=4&objinst=5&prodcons=1&random=3&regexmatch=4&reversefile=4&ringmsg=1&sieve=4&spellcheck=4&strcat=2&sumcol=3&wc=3&wordfreq=5

and:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/craps.php?xcpu=0&xmem=0&xloc=1&ackermann=1&ary=3&echo=5&except=1&fibo=2&hash=1&hash2=4&heapsort=4&hello=1&lists=3&matrix=3&methcall=5&moments=2&nestedloop=4&objinst=5&prodcons=1&random=3&regexmatch=4&reversefile=4&ringmsg=1&sieve=4&spellcheck=4&strcat=2&sumcol=3&wc=3&wordfreq=5

I comment that in terms of memory used, Ocaml scores 43.4 while C# scores 
11.1, and in terms of lines of code, Ocaml scores 45.8 while C# scores 
26.4.  If absolute speed (and minimal memory usage) is needed, you want C.  
Note that even C++ is signifigantly slower than C.

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Brian