On 12/1/2011 1:26 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
I think this thread has shown that D folk need to accept that Java is a
critical platform out there and will be for many years to come.
I understand that. Java isn't going anywhere. I was only addressing the idea
that the Java bytecode is a burden for compiler developers or not.
D's fight is with C, C++, Go, not with Java. D needs to make inroads
into areas currently dominated by C and C++ and those being swept up in
the tide of Go.
I suspect Go's market is more the Java market than the C/C++ one.
So people doing the benchmarks you have seen are substandard and don't
realize you are supposed to write the best idiomatic version of the
algorithm in each of the languages under test. This is not a stick to
beat Java with.
It is when they are using a Java stick to beat D with :-)
Fortran compiler writers have been doing this sort of thing very
successfully for years: 1960s Fortran 4 serial code gets converted into
parallel code by clever inferences and "reverse engineering.
It has always amazed me that owners of these old Fortran codes think it
is more important to expend resources on clever compiler trickery that
just to rewrite the codes in a modern language, like Fortran 2009.
Of course rewriting would give an opportunity to change language. I bet
they would go to C++ not D. Though staying with Fortran 2009 may be
even better.
The C++ folks do the same thing. Rather than add vector operations to the core
language, they rely on "vectorizing" compilers that reverse engineer loops into
a higher level construct.
So the real question here is to get some benchmarks together to show
that D outshines C, C++ and Fortran 2009 -- with of course the
benchmarks being written properly in idiomatic language for each
language not, as you noted earlier, transliterations from one language
to all the others.
I've done a lot of benchmarks in the past. The universal reaction to them is
one of:
1. There's a bug in my compiler that "deleted" the benchmark code (what actually
happened is it was dead code, and the compiler deleted dead code).
2. I somehow cheated, because the results cannot possibly be true.
3. I used a sabotaged compiler for language X to compare against.
4. I didn't write the code correctly for language X. This charge is leveled at
me even when I'm careful to use OTHER peoples' published X code, and provide
links to the originals.
So color me a bit weary of the abuse. I tend to let people do their own
benchmarks. It's also why I stopped publishing language comparison charts.
