Pretty cool way of visualizing it.

http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>
> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html
>
> --
>    Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>    There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

They left out assembler...

( me -> ducks behind my computer desk )

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>
> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html

This is some finding!  Very interesting no doubt!

Python looks like a supernova!  Ruby is way off to the right!  LuaJIT spot-on as
one of the best scripting languages around.  and I have a soft spot for Ikarus
Scheme... :)

well, the chart speaks for itself.  best yet:

"Does introducing functional features kill performance?
No, it does not."

:)

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>>
>> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html
> 
> This is some finding!  Very interesting no doubt!

Well, you *do* have to read the comments.  Like the fact that it's almost 5 
years old now, which is half a lifetime in a lot of these languages.

I thought the visual representations were a pretty good idea, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Btw, one thing which people seldom take into account when comparing
languages, is their availability (tools, compilers, IDEs...), ease of use
(of those tools) and library availability for different platforms.

  I might be somewhat of a minority among programming professionals
because I assume that the majority of professionals only program for
one single platform. However, I have programmed professionally (ie. as
my payjob) for three rather different platforms, all of them with their
own set of tools and design principles: Sparc/Solaris, PC/Windows and
iPhone/MacOS X. (Naturally I have also programmed quite a lot as a hobby
in Linux, but that's not drastically different from Sparc/Solaris.)

  There are only two closely related languages which all these significantly
different platforms have in common: C and C++.

  These two languages are supported out-of-the-box in all three platforms.
(Ok, Windows doesn't support it by default, but it only takes downloading
and installing MS Visual Studio Express, which is rather easy.) They also
are used to create native executables which don't require exotic runtime
libraries to work (at least for regular basic programs).

  Java gets close, as it was designed from the start to be portable and
easy to use in a cross-platform way. Except that in this particular case
it fails because you can't develop Java apps for the iPhone. (Not that the
iPhone couldn't support it, but because Apple doesn't want to.) The same
could probably be said of many of the scripting languages (especially those
designed for web development).

  However, basically any other language, especially those fancy ones, and
you are in a rather hopeless situation. Availability is poor or non-existent,
and even when there is availability, you often can't create native executables
and instead have to rely on heavy-duty runtime environments or libraries
which are very uncommon in those platforms.

  Also sometimes it doesn't matter how fancy a programming language is,
if it lacks certain critical libraries and/or features, they are not very
practical. You can create some fancy quicksort-oneliners with them and do
all kind of "see how fancy and better this is than your" stuff, but when
it comes to implement something *practical*, they often fall short. Maybe
there's no good library support. Maybe it's something else.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   There are only two closely related languages which all these significantly
> different platforms have in common: C and C++.

And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few 
languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way of 
building a UI.

And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written in 
at the system layer?

I'm wondering how that works out if you discount cross-compilers. Or if 
someone spent a fair amount of time building cross-compilers for other 
languages. Certainly FORTH would be trivial to put on any of these machines 
if anyone wanted it.

I've worked on a number of platforms that almost supported C, and which 
certainly weren't anywhere near what you'd call "standard" - no math lib, no 
stdio, no pointers to functions, etc. There are also chips that only support 
their own custom language, often based on BASIC or something.

But yes, knowing C is pretty much a prerequisite for working on any machine 
that doesn't come from the electronics warehouse down the road. :)

> and instead have to rely on heavy-duty runtime environments or libraries
> which are very uncommon in those platforms.

Given people are porting Linux to cell phones and set-top boxes, it seems to 
me it's way out of the "embedded" range. If your CPU has an MMU, you're no 
longer writing code for an "embedded" machine, but embedded code for a 
general-purpose machine. :-) Now get off my lawn.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>   significantly
>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
> 
> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few
> languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way
> of building a UI.

JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?

> And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written
> in at the system layer?

Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications. I don't know if the
internals are in Obj-C. Probably low level things are in plain C (like
kernel :P)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>>   significantly
>>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
>> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few
>> languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way
>> of building a UI.
> 
> JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?

Javascript's DOM model, obviously. Don't be coy.

> Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications.

Isn't it also what you use to write iPhone applications? I thought that was 
part of the appeal.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> Warp wrote:
>>>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>>>   significantly
>>>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
>>> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the
>>> few languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a
>>> standard way of building a UI.
>> 
>> JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?
> 
> Javascript's DOM model, obviously. Don't be coy.

Well, then you're just saying web browsers are being ported to lots of
platforms...

>> Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications.
> 
> Isn't it also what you use to write iPhone applications? I thought that
> was part of the appeal.

Yes, you use Obj-C there too, and most of the non-GUI APIs are identical.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Well, then you're just saying web browsers are being ported to lots of
> platforms...

Right. And web browsers nowadays have javascript built in. You got it! So C 
and C++ aren't the only languages common on lots of platforms including the 
embedded ones. :-)  Altho on platforms with no UI at all, I'll grant you 
javascript is less likely to be there than C.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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