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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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