Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

From: Marin David Condic (nobody_at_noplace.com)
Date: 02/13/04 

Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 13:11:21 GMT

Well, there's *always* exceptional cases and we could sit here all day
long dreaming up applications in which math errors matter or math errors
don't. We could also find lots of apps in which speed matters. The key
factor being that for most of the software that gets built in the world
(look at what's on your desktop for appropriate examples) and for most
of the processors on which they execute (again, look at the computer on
your desk for an appropriate example) the relative efficiency of most
compilers/languages is incredibly unimportant. The word processor I'm
using to type this could have been built in interpretive Basic
functioning at 10x the number of CPU cycles as an equivalent program in
some compiled language and I'd probably never see any difference from my
keyboard.

So rather than talk about language/compiler efficiency its probably more
productive for most apps to discuss what *else* a language/compiler
offers the developer. (Things like safety/reliability, ease of
understanding, developmental leverage, available tools & libraries, etc.)

MDC

Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen wrote:
>
>
> It could well be. In the case of an interactive raytracer, minor
> numerical errors does not really matter if you can get the results at
> twice the speed. I imagine you can find other applications with
> similar characteristics. But in general, I agree that for the
> majority of applications the difference in speed between languages and
> compilers is nothing to worry about.
>
> <snip>
> 

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