[Haskell-cafe] Can Haskell outperform C++?

[wren ng thornton]

On 5/18/12 7:45 AM, Roman Werpachowski wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2012 15:30:09 +1200, "Richard O'Keefe"<ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
>> The claim was and remains solely that
>> THE TIME DIFFERENCE BETWEEN *ALGORITHMS*
>>    can be bigger than
>> THE TIME DIFFERENCE BETWEEN *LANGUAGES*
>>    and is in this particular case.
>
> Yes, but aren't the differences in the same ballpark, and if we want
> to compare *languages*, we should use identical algorithms to make the
> comparison fair.

"Fair" in what sense? That is, what _exactly_ are you hoping to compare?

If the goal is to benchmark the implementation of the runtime, VM, or 
built-in types, then requiring the same algorithm makes sense--- because 
the algorithm is irrelevant other than to provide a bunch of calls to 
the runtime/vm/etc. However, benchmarking a language's implementation in 
this way is rarely that helpful. It's great for comparing CPython to 
PyPy (or any other in-language cross-compiler comparison), but what 
would it tell you about Haskell vs C++?

If the goal is to compare, say, production costs for a given level of 
performance, then fixing the algorithm is not at all fair. The fact of 
the matter is that different languages make different algorithms easier 
to (a) implement, and (b) discover/identify/generalize. Thus, when it 
comes to real-world software, the language that makes it easy to 
implement good algorithms has a major advantage--- an advantage which is 
being specifically ignored by fixing the algorithm aforehand.

In order for "fair" to have any meaning whatsoever, we must first 
specify what is being compared, so that we know what it is that things 
are supposed to be fair with regard to.

-- 
Live well,
~wren