Re: In which cases/problems is Prolog faster than Java?

"A.L." wrote:

On Fri, 23 May 2008 03:02:56 -0700 (PDT), Paulo Moura
<pjlmoura@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



People often use Java not because its OO features per se but because
its libraries. And, when talking about libraries that allows you to
write powerful applications without the need of implementing every
single bit of functionality yourself, then we, Prolog programmers,
have good reasons to fell envy :(

Right. Languages are not the issue anymore. I have selected Prolog
because of CLP(FD) functionality that is much batter in Prolog than
provided by other languages, not because Prolog is "better" or
"faster"

In addition, significant factor in selecting language are
licensing/business terms, such as cost of development environment and
run time fees

A.L.

I don't think that Paulo was saying that Languages aren't an issue
anymore.
I think he was emphasizing why people choose certain languages over
others (e.g. availability of libraries)

A.L. Languages are always an issue. Of the selection among languages
that belong to the same family
(e.g object oriented language, or 3gl, languages, or 4GL language) is
sometimes not such a big deal. However,
when you are choosing languages that represent very different
programmaing paradigms such as (Java vs Prolog), or (Fortran vs
Smalltalk) etc
then the language is an issue. The language has everything to do
with what models are or are not available to you.
The language you choose dictates how you see the world. Sure different
language paradigms can be used to solve the same problem
but the approach and solution will usually be radically different (that
why the languages are from different paradigms)

What may be going away (temporarily) is concern over processor speed,
ram, and disk space. Excluding movies, photos, and music
we don't even know what to do with hundreds of dozens of terabytes of
hard drive storage. Excluding multimedia applications,
we are not yet (at least not all of us) taxing all the teraflops that
we have available on today's low end computers. Sure GUIs can
take up a little RAM but a program that really requires 8 gig. If any
argument is moot (temporarily moot) it would be the shootout
over hardware efficiency. But my friend languages are the issue now
and will be the issue even when we're programming
androids :-)


.

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