On Monday, 15 February 2016 at 13:51:38 UTC, ixid wrote:
Every time there is a D thread on reddit it feels like the new
user is expecting mind-blowing speed from D.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/45v03g/porterstemmerd_an_implementation_of_the_porter/
This is the most recent one where John Colvin provided some
pointers to speed it up significantly. Walter has done some
good work taking the low-hanging fruit to speed up DMD code and
there is a lot of effort going on with reference counting
machinery but I wondered if some of the common errors people
make that slow down D code can be addressed?
Literals used to be a hidden speed bump but I think that was
improved, now the append operator is one of the most common
culprits, can this not be enhanced behind the scenes to work
more like append? Do others notice common pitfalls between the
article code and what the D community then suggests where we
can bridge the gap so naive users get faster code?
Since I posted this thread I've learned std.algorithm.sum is 4
times slower than a naive loop sum. Even if this is for reasons
of accuracy this is exactly what I am talking about- this is a
hidden iceberg of terrible performance that will reflect poorly
on D. That's so slow the function needs a health warning.
