[Shootout-list] Re: Coding For Speed

[Robert Seeger]

On the same note, would it be worth promoting the use of the "other
interesting submissions" suggession for each test to hold other
implementations that, while they don't necessarily meet the test
requirements (or aren't as fast as the one that did), are well written
and use the language features well? Such submissions could use common
external libraries, too (CPEN, Tcllib, gimp, etc).

For example, the ackermann test would be best solved in Tcl using an
iterative method. Such an implementation would be a demonstration of
"How I would do it, in an effort to make the code easy to understand
an maintain". It would be interesting to take the pure speed, standard
shootout submission... and then compare it to the "this is how I would
do it in practice" submission. It would allow people to see the
difference between speed optimized code and every day, maintainable
code... in both speed and "beauty".

Rob Seeger


On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:55:21 +0100, Shae Matijs Erisson
<shae@scannedinavian.com> wrote:
> 
> I think the essence of this email is something I've been wondering about
> myself...
> 
> > When engaging in the exercise of "benchmarking" inherent in that
> > exercise (to me) is to identify coding techniques and paradigms
> > within the idiom of the language being used to perform the
> > stated tasks as fast as possible.
> 
> Similarly, my priorities are understandability and programmer time.
> For a given task, I want to be able to turn out a working solution that can
> easily be understood by readers in as little time as possible.
> To me, source code is primarily communication with other programmers, most
> often myself some years after I wrote the original code.
> 
> But there's a much greater value in code as communication.
> 
> It's hard for me to find library code that fits my clients' needs, partially
> because I don't know their needs ahead of time (usually, neither do they).
> When I find code that does part of what I need, if it's well-written, if it
> communicates well, then I get the greatest value because I can quickly change
> or extend that code to do the rest of the task.
> 
> > Thus, I disagree that benchmarks are about applying some
> > arbitrary programming paradigm to a set of languages, just so
> > the "look" of the programs are similar. Benchmarks should
> > illustrate how a given language can be used to perform a
> > given task (the benchmark) in that language, particularly
> > using the best programming techniques and idioms unique to
> > that language.
> >
> > Thus, to me, the primary essence of benchmarking is comparing
> > how different languages can be uniquely applied to optimally
> > perform the same tasks, and comparing those results.
> >
> > If there are other characteristics you are really trying to
> > compare between languages, it would be best to explicitly state
> > them (such as shortest program, etc) and not confuse issues
> 
> The problem I see is that it's easy to directly test LOC, CPU time, RAM usage,
> but it's really hard to test readability and good use of idioms.
> At some level that's like unit testing poetry.
> 
> There are code complexity tests, you could use code metrics like cyclomatic
> complexity. But I don't know a satisfactory way to test code for elegance.
> (On the subject of cross-language code complexity, Serguey Zefirov suggested
> http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/techreps/pdf/TR141.pdf )
> 
> But, I would most value a shootout that has a 'code as literature' section.
> I don't know how that would work, and I've never heard of a multi-language
> website that does that critiques benchmarks for elegance,
> but I do know I would want to read from and contribute to such a website.
> 
> Is a 'code as literature' a possibile addition to the Shootout?
> I'd like something option that encourages clarity and understandability.
> --
> Programming is the Magic Executable Fridge Poetry, | www.ScannedInAvian.com
> It is machines made of thought, fueled by ideas.   | -- Shae Matijs Erisson
> 
> 
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