+1 for supporting all the JVM primitive types properly. It is worth noting that the benefits would extend much further than just OpenGL, e.g.: - int is a commonly used type in Java interop. Casting to/from it all the time is a minor annoyance/overhead - int is the type used for array indexing on the JVM - all the small (< 8 byte) primitive types save memory footprint, which is important since memory bandwidth is the limiting factor in some workloads - int/float fit into a register (and therefore perform much better) on 32 bit machines (which still exist, believe it or not....) - char is a pretty useful primitive type if you are doing text processing - byte is also frequently useful, especially for IO
I believe that with some enhancements to the Clojure compiler, supporting all the JVM primitive types shouldn't be too difficult, and it would provide many benefits both in terms of overall performance and interop convenience. On Monday, 9 September 2013 21:43:12 UTC+8, Alex Fowler wrote: > > Hello! > > With this letter I would like to receive an answer from somebody from the > development team (if anyone else has something to say, you're surely > welcome :) ). > > I am working for a big multimedia company and recently I have been > considering moving to Clojure as the main language of development. We have > been doing Java and Scala before, but now when I tried Clojure and see the > possibilities it provides, I would definitely stand for it to be our > ground. However, while I am so satisfied with everything - the language, > the community, the Java interop, there is still something that hinders and > makes me linger. Namely, the lack of good support of floats and ints in the > language. While many people would not consider it to be a huge disadvantage > or even notice it, things are not so bright when it comes to OpenGL. > > The case is that OpenGL and 3D graphics hardware in general has no support > for doubles or longs. Therefore, all libraries, all data and all > computations are meant to be performed with floats and ints (shaders too). > Due to the lack of good support of these data types in Clojure (for > example, there are no ^float and ^int typehints, float and int values can > only be typecasted to, all calculations always retain doubles and longs), > results in too many extra typecasts, which are absolutely unnecessary and > take too much time. So, calculations become very cumbersome, even if we do > not take mandatory boxing into account. > > Considering that such kinds of calculations are usually abuntant in the > aforementioned types of applications, the penalty grows really huge. I have > endeavoured several discussions on the IRC to find out possible > workarounds. Although many good proposals by many good people were made, > aimed at improving the situation, none of them could solve the fundamental > lack of the ability to manipulate 32bit primitive (or even boxed) data > types. That lack renders Clojure not really suitable for heavy-load OpenGL > applications that require somewhat extensive calculations: some kinds of > games, simulations, generative graphics and so on. Considering how superior > Clojure is to any other language available for JVM, that black spot looks > especially embarrasing. And I could imagine falling back to Java for fast > computations, just like we fall back to ASM in, say C, that is very > undesirable and discouraging, since we want to pick Clojure for Clojure and > it will be too cumbersome to make 50/50% Java/Clojure apps just to work > around that design decision. > > Therefore, while deciding if to pick Clojure as the base for our > development, I would like to know answers to the following questions: > > 1) What is the current reason for the support for these types to be > missing? > 2) Are there any plans for improvement of support for floats, ints and > maybe, localized unboxed calculations? Or is there some advice on how to > enable their support? > 3) What is you vision for Clojure + OpenGL applications? > 4) Is it possible to request support for floats, ints and maybe shorts for > the language? > 5) Is it possible to request support for localized unboxed calculations, > like (with-unboxed ... ) and localized float-only and int-only > calculations, like, say in special macros (with-floats-&-ints ... here go > (+) (-) and stuff ONLY with floats/ints ... ) ? > > Preferably, I would like to hear the answers from somebody from the > development team, because I have already received enough support from the > community, on the IRC, I appreciate it, but now I have to make a serious > choice for our company and I feel quite responsible for that. I also feel > that these questions are very important for any specialist that works with > OpenGL and influence Clojure acceptance for OpenGL-enabled applications > world-wide. Thank you. > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
