While I generally favor correct over fast (worrying about fast before
you're correct is a good sign that you're engaged in premature
optimization), I'm still trying to figure out the tradeoffs
here. Especially since most LISPs & other dynamic languages don't seem
to run into this issue - or at least the debate that we're seeing
here.
IIUC, the problem is that we've got three "kinds" (not types; which
normally refers to bit lengths) of integer:
primitive, which is what the JVM does it's math with.
boxed, which is the primitive wrapped in a Java object, and what Java
normally uses.
bigint, which is a clojure-specific kind of integer.
Other numeric types don't have issues because they don't have all
three kinds (is that right? Or could this entire thread be rewritten
in terms of primitive vs. boxed floats?).
And the bottom line is that for some reason we can't get from
primitives (which are required for speed) to bigints (which are
required to maximize the domain for which we get correct answers)
automatically.
Assuming that that's right, the first question that occurs to me is:
Does clojure really need java's boxed types? Other than for java
interop, of course.
Again, other languages seem to get by with the platform primitives
(module tweaks to get type information) going to bigints, and to get
reasonable performance by throwing away the dynamic nature of the
language for the hot spots. Could clojure do something similar, or is
this something technical issue with the JVM, similar to the reason we
don't get TCE?
<mike
--
Mike Meyer <m...@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.
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