[Haskell-cafe] Re: A suggestion for the next high profile Haskell project

[Patrick Mulder]

> why you (and Donald) don't want to understand me. i
> say that imperative
> Haskell code is more efficient than pure (and
> especially lazy) one and that
> even such code in ghc is slower than C equivalent.

I think the concern about execution speed of
algorithms is a fairly recent topic. At least, the
reason why compilers were developped at all was to
save expensive memory capacity. Imagine to pay $3500
for 2kB memory!
(http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/system7/system7_tpress.html)

It would pay off to invest thinking in how to make
programs short in terms of memory space usage. The
counting of instruction cycles in speed context came
only later when personal computers became mainstream.
And nowadays, they use is an interesting idea of
measuring performance in multimedia: "Quality of
Experience". I don't know exactly which parameters
play a role, but it is interesting to relate speed to
human perception. At least, speed is relative after
all (with respect to the timebase we use: eons to
femtoseconds).

Patrick


		
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