It seems like Lua is just about the fastest dynamic
language implementation every.
I doubt this. Lua has hardly any operations, so it isn't
surprising it does those fast. The Shootout isn't a meaningful
guide to anything. Testing some of the same things I get
wildly different results (and my results are the result of
re-running the tests in random order over many hours).
Just my two cents on the whole Shootout thing (I don't want to start
another flamewar ;)
I personaly think that the Shootout is pretty good to compare Virtual
Machines and Interpreter performances. This way you can see the cost of
a call, a method dispatch, ... This can give you a general idea about
what speed to expect of the VM, and more generaly the "cost" of using a
VM against using native code.
For languages compiled to native code, this is less interesting since
they can perform a wide range of optimizations for a given test,
removing then the whole purpose of the test.
What count more to me is to know :
- the "cost" of using a VM : cpu+memory
- the highlevel features that the language/VM offer
Neko was designed to be a good mix between lowering the cost as much as
possible while keeping a simple design and enabling enough highlevel
features.
Nicolas
--
Neko : One VM to run them all
(http://nekovm.org)
