Language comparisons

[Nick Perkins]

..humble aplogies re: published source

I guess what I mean to say is that I would consider the 'Same Thing' tests
to much more valid than the 'Same Way' tests.

I suppose I can understand why you might want to do 'Same Way' comaparisons,
but I think that the specified 'way' might be biased in favour of certain
languages, or a least, ceratain 'types' of languages.

The 'Same Thing' method of testing is much more fair and more relevant.

I would like to see a summary/comparison of 'Same Way' tests versus 'Same
Thing' tests.  If some languages are consistently 'better' in the 'Same
Thing' tests than they are in the 'Same Way' tests, then that might indicate
a bias in the 'way'.

It's just that i have noticed that ( particularly in python ),
seemingly efficient programs can often be made much faster.
Things can usually be done many ways in python, and it is
rarely obvious which will be fastest.

eg.
[ from wordcount python implentation]..

# Joel Rosdahl suggested using translate table to speed up
# word splitting.  That change alone sped this program up by
# at least a factor of 3.


..Thanks for the website, keep up the good work!