Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!apple!uokmax!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: Aggressive optimization Message-ID: <4296@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> Date: 16 Nov 90 07:31:23 GMT References: <5494:Nov1519:06:3790@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <6063@lanl.gov> Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 47 Please do NOT take this seriously! In article <6063@lanl.gov>, jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes: > As to whether C coding is effective, I can only judge from > experience. Every code that I've ever recoded from C to some other > language runs _faster_ in the other language. This is a _uniform_ > observation with no exceptions _at_all_. I'd _love_ you to recode some C programs into Lisp for me. (I'd also like to see you recode my screen editor in Cobol. ) > This _may_ be that the C > code available to me is abnormally bad. But, it seems unlikely. It > seems more likely that the C code I've seen is typical. I would argue that it is typical in being abnormally bad. I suggest that the basic problem in the text I've quoted is that C is a good language for people who know what they are doing, but that there is rather more crud around in C than Sturgeon's Law would predict, and that Jim Giles is just a better programmer than most. Certainly someone who knows about Fortran 90 has more ways available of thinking about a program than someone who only knows the two nearly identical languages C and Pascal (gee, it would be nice if C had arrays). Bearing in mind that every time I've recoded from Pascal or Fortran into C, I've had a speedup, and that 2:1 ratio in the speed of code produced by different C compilers on the same machine is quite common, may I respectfully suggest [here comes the serious bit] that if anyone wants to argue "my language _is_ faster than yours" they present actual examples (such and such a program available by anonymous FTP from such and such a site) with hard numbers, and that people wanting to argue "my language _could_ be faster than yours" remember that a major factor in determining whether it _will_ be faster is the _market_ for better compilers? (Does anyone sell high-quality Jovial compilers for Encore Multimaxes? I doubt it.) [end of serious bit] I'm reminded of a debate we had when I was an undergraduate. The topic was "will high-level languages effectively replace assembler?" Both sides were wrong, the answer was "no, but C will". -- The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net. --Alasdair Macintyre.