Christopher Smith wrote:
Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
I have concerns about speed in FP, however, and I see more problems
that can be more easily cast as OO than FP.
The issue of speed has come up several times in this thread, and frankly
I don't understand why. OCaml programs perform within 10% the
performance of comparable C programs.
That may be. So why do so many people using FP for the ICFP contests
immediately dump their favorite FP language the moment "speed" enters
the issue (and speed always seems to enter before it should).
So, why did so many people switch languages rather than take a quick
pass through their data structures? That's a monster hit. I wouldn't
make that change without a quick profiling pass no matter *what* the
language is.
With Haskell, the problem seems to be "laziness". Even some of the most
experienced hackers can't tell where the performance is going. In the
last ICFP contest, you needed to get the data structure right and needed
to know if you didn't.
I always seem to be amazed at the end of the ICFP contests how much C,
C++ and Perl dominate the results. They always seem to take the
majority of the top ten if they don't actually win.
These are contests that are rigged by the functional folks and have a
self-selected group of participants. And they *still* can't stomp on
the imperative languages.
-a
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