[ale] Ale Inc.? (was RE: [ale] surviving sans work

[Irv Mullins]

On Monday 04 February 2002 05:38 pm, Joseph A Knapka wrote:

> I disagree. I want a language that lets me use the right
> abstraction for the problem, whatever that may be, and do
> it in a clean, consistent way. In the absence of such a
> language, I have to mix things up. The languages I
> really enjoy working in (C, Python, Prolog) have this in
> common: they do what they do very well, with a minimum of
> fuss and an orthogonal set of features. Also, they're
> simple enough that a single human brain can understand
> them easily; this is a severely underrated trait
> in software systems.

A couple of years ago, while experimenting with Java, tried a little 
benchmark from the Linux Journal. The original benchmark called for the 
creation of 500,000 integers, then summing them. Java ran out of memory at 
just over 400,000 on my old pc (32 megs), so I lowered the sights a bit 'til 
it fit:

Java, 400000 integer objects,
ET 6922 millisec. or 58 per millisecond.*
(*timings reasonably close to LJ results)

Then I tried the same thing with a "toy" interpreter I had on hand:
Euphoria, 400000 integers,
ET 339 millisec, or 1176 per millisecond.

But Euphoria didn't run out of memory at 400k....so I raised the stakes to 
5 million integers, then 10 million.

Euphoria did Java's 400k, plus another 4+ million, in slightly less time
than it took Java do the 400k.  Euphoria's virtual memory kicked in at 
5,000,000 and things slowed down considerably, but the job eventually got 
done. 

Of course, the same thing could be done even faster in C.. All this really 
proves is that Java's "everything as an object" approach adds a lot of 
overhead which may or may not be of any use for the problem at hand.
Overhead that can bog things down, or prevent the program from running 
at all. So, if I were summing large lists of numbers, (which is exactly what 
I do, since I write accounting programs) maybe Java wouldn't be the 
best choice for me.

Regards,
Irv




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