There are lies, damn lies, and then there are benchmarks. Awhile ago I looked into the Shootout and saw that Java was significantly outperforming Scala on a numerical problem (pidigits). I thought, "that's odd, the Scala code must be written without performance in mind - it should always be possible to write Java-like Scala." So I opened up the Scala source and didn't seem so bad. But then I looked at the Java code ( http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/program.php?test=pidigits&lang=javaxint&id=4). It's using the GMP library (http://gmplib.org/) for arbitrary precision math while the Scala code was essentially just using a thin wrapper around the Java standard lib BigInt. Effectively the Shootout wasn't measuring Java vs Scala; it was measuring GMP vs BigInt. That comparison might be useful as well but it has nothing to do with what was purportedly being compared.
On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Isaac Gouy <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Mar 4, 12:03 am, Charles Oliver Nutter <[email protected]> wrote: > -snip- > > The benchmarks on The Benchmarks Game range from useful (large-scale > > object graph creation and iteration) to useless (numerical > > computations, which excessively penalize languages you probably > > shouldn't do numerical computation in to begin with). > -snip- > > I remember being told something similar but their useful was your > useless and their useless was your useful :-) > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "JVM Languages" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<jvm-languages%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JVM Languages" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages?hl=en.
