Warp wrote:

>   But is it better specifically because it was made in Haskell, or is it
> better simply because they made it better?

This is the operative question.

First, notice that this application consists entirely of processing text 
strings in a complex way - which is practically what the entire Perl 
language was *designed* for from the very beginning. This is what many 
people consider to be Perl's greatest strength, and what Perl is 
supposedly highly optimised to do efficiently.

And yet, Haskell outperformed it, and matches the spec more exactly.

All of this *suggests* many things - significantly, that Haskell matches 
the spec more closely hints that Haskell makes complex algorithms 
"easier" to express, and so a closer match could be achieved.

But what does it *prove*? Well, strictly, nothing. Maybe the Perl 
implementation just sucks? Maybe the Perl version could easily be 
modified to be faster. Maybe there are bugs that could easily be fixed 
to make it fit the spec better too.

Actually, I take that back. It does prove one thing worth knowing: some 
people used Haskell to build a real-world tool that people who know 
nothing about Haskell actually use to do stuff. That's not an 
earth-shattering result, but it's an important one none the less.

> And if I make a C++ versionwhich is even faster, does that mean C++ wins all?

I was about to say "I'd be interested in seeing something like that", 
but then I realised that in my current state of learning, I wouldn't 
understand a word of it. :-S

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