[Haskell-cafe] Re: Why can't Haskell be faster?

[Jon Harrop]

On Friday 02 November 2007 23:53, Isaac Gouy wrote:
> > > Best case you'll end up concluding that the added complexity had
> > > no adverse effect on the results.
>
> Best case would be seeing that the results were corrected against bias
> in favour of long-lines, and ranked programs in a way that looks-right
> when we look at the program source code side-by-side.

Why would you want to subjectively "correct" for "bias" in favour of long 
lines?

> > Or, as has been suggested, count the number of words in the program.
> > Again, not perfect (it's possible in some languages to write things
> > which has no whitespace, but is still lots of tokens).
>
> Wouldn't that be "completely arbitrary"?

That is not an argument in favour of needlessly adding extra complexity and 
adopting a practically-irrelevant metric.

Why not use the byte count of a PNG encoding of a photograph of the source 
code written out by hand in blue ballpoint pen?

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?e