benchmark

[Dhananjay]

On Aug 7, 6:12 pm, alex23 <wuwe... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 7, 8:08 pm, M8R-n7v... at mailinator.com wrote:
>
> > Really how silly can it be when you suggest someone is taking a
> > position and tweaking the benchmarks to prove a point [...]
>
> I certainly didn't intend to suggest that you had tweaked -anything-
> to prove your point.

While that was not how I read it first, I assume that was a misjudged
reading.

> I do, however, think there is little value in slavishly implementing
> the same algorithm in different languages. To constrain a dynamic
> language by what can be achieved in a static language seemed like such
> an -amazingly- artificial constraint to me. That you're a fan of
> Python makes such a decision even more confusing.

It is a sufficiently well understood maxim, that any comparison
between two factors should attempt to keep other factors as equal as
possible (Ceteris Paribus - Everything else being equal), slavishly if
you will. It is my perception that had I changed the algorithms, I
would've been a much higher level of criticism a lot more for
comparing apples and oranges.

I simply could not understand your point with regards to dynamic vs.
static languages. If you are by any chance referring to make the code
a little less OO, I believe the entire exercise could be redone using
a procedural algorithm, and all the languages will run much much
faster than they currently do. But that would be essentially moving
from an OO based design to a procedural design. Is that what you are
referring to (I suspect not .. I suspect it is something else) ? If
not, would certainly appreciate you spending 5 mins describing that.

I am a fan of Python on its own merits. There is little relationship
between that and this exercise.


> It's great that you saw value in Python enough to choose it for actual
> project work. It's a shame you didn't endeavour to understand it well
> enough before including it in your benchmark.

I have endeavoured hard, and maybe there's a shortcoming in the
results of that endeavour. But I haven't quite understood what it is I
haven't understood (hope that makes sense :) )

> As for it being "disappointing", the real question is: has it been
> disappointing for you in actual real-world code?

I am extremely happy with it. But there definitely are some projects I
worked on earlier I would simply not choose any dynamic language for
(not ruby / not python / not ruby / not groovy). These languages
simply cannot be upto the performance demands required of some
projects.

> Honestly, performance benchmarks seem to be the dick size comparison
> of programming languages.

Not sure if there is a real life equivalent use case if I was to use
this analogy further. But there are some days (mind you not most days)
one needs a really big dick. Always helpful to know the size.