Haskell performance

[mahogny at sirius.areta.org]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:

> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 10:28:54 -0000
> From: Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>
> To: Ketil Malde <ketil+haskell at ii.uib.no>,
>      "[iso-8859-1] Sébastien Pierre" <sebastien.pierre at adival.com>
> Cc: glasgow-haskell-users at haskell.org
> Subject: RE: Haskell performance
>
> | > I am currently evaluating different languages for implementing an
> | > application which will have to manipulate large graphs representing
> | > the structure of programs and their evolution.
> |
> | > Speed is in fact a crucial criterium for the language choice.

Not long ago, I threw out 15 000 lines of optimized C in favour of haskell
just because of speed; implementing the algorithm I wanted would have been
more or less impossible because of the overwhelming complexity. In C I
would shoot my toes off by just looking at any memory use; in haskell I
can concentrate on coding this much faster algorithm.

if you want a 10 times speed up, you wait some time for the hardware
technology to make up. if you want a 100 times speed up, you consider your
algorithms.

----------------------------------------------------------
Johan 'Mahogny' 'Staalis' Henriksson, mahogny at areta.org
Student at Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University
Lead Coder at Areta, www.areta.org
Engineer and sysadmin at BRK-Tjaenst AB, www.brksweden.se