can a lazy language give fast code?

[Scott J.]

I cannot open the files you mentioned in http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~boquist/
 My acrobat Distiller complains and my winzip 8.1 program complains (for the
gzipped postcript file) that it is not a valid archive. Anyway I am still
interested to read it.

Regards

John Scott

----- Original Message -----
From: "Josef Svenningsson" <josefs@cs.chalmers.se>
To: "Scott J." <jscott@planetinternet.be>
Cc: <haskell-cafe@haskell.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: can a lazy language give fast code?


> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 29 Jul 2002, Scott J. wrote:
>
> > Can one write withthe Haskell compliler faster code than in the
> > examples of http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/ where GHC (old
> > Haskell 98?) seems to be much slower than Ocaml or Mlton both strict
> > functional languages. Can one expect any improvements in speed in the
> > future?
> >
> There have been speed improvements in the past. I recommend reading Urban
> Boquists thesis where he describes a whole program Haskell compiler which
> generates pretty fast code. The thesis is very readable and I recommend it
> heartily to everyone with just the slightest interest in compiling lazy
> languages.
> It can be found here:
>
> http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~boquist/
>
> While we're on the subject there are a few things that I need to let out.
>
> I think the reason why Haskell compilers aren't generating any faster code
> is that there is a lack of competition among different compilers. And I
> think that the lack of competition depends on that noone wants to write a
> front-end to Haskell. It's simply too complicated and too much boring work
> before one comes down to the interesting details. I know there is work on
> creating standardised front-ends and this is a step in the right
> direction. But the current state of affairs is the price we've had to pay
> to have such a feature-rich language.
>
> All the best,
>
> /Josef
>
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