[Haskell-cafe] Re: OCaml list sees abysmal Language Shootout results

[Malcolm Wallace]

"karczma" <karczma at info.unicaen.fr> writes:

> > I think the Haskell community has just been a bit slower in understanding
> > the importance of strictness :)
> 
> OK, I admit that I will never understand these complaints about the
> inefficiency of non-strict computations, since what I *require* in most
> of my work is laziness.

Indeed, I have to agree.  I have spent some time fiddling with
programs for the Language Shootout which started this conversation,
and by far most of the effort was spent in deliberately making code
/slower/ by introducing strictness.

For instance, the shootout often requires that a task be carried out N
times, to make the timings large enough to measure.  In all the naive
Haskell implementations of these tasks, Haskell wins by a mile.  Why?
Because the language quite reasonably says that if you multiply
a matrix by itself N times, but only use the result of the last
multiplication, well it is jolly well not going to bother computing
the first (N-1) identical multiplications - what a waste of time!

So is it fair to compare the default lazy Haskell solution with all
the eager solutions out there that laboriously do all this unnecessary
work?  Apparently not, so we have gone to all kinds of trouble to slow
the Haskell solution down, make it over-strict, do the work N times,
and thereby have a "fair" performance test.  Huh.

Regards,
    Malcolm