Re: following up on speed

[Adam Turoff <address@hidden>]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2002 at 12:43:22AM -0400, Daniel Weinreb wrote:
> >Actually, I think it would be fair. In my experience, many C/C++ coders
> >don't seem to think too much about allocation issues.
>
> Well, OK. One must be careful about exactly what one is trying to 
> measure and what question one is trying to answer.

Yep.  

Comparing a program using best-in-class GC with Scheme against the
default malloc/free in C is fair for comparing average case
performance with typical Scheme/C programmers.  That would be more
informative than benchmarking theoretical maximum performance in
Scheme or C.

The important difference here is that the Scheme programmer uses 
a GC that benefits from decades of research without thinking about it,
while the C programmer must spend time tweaking or replacing the default
malloc implementation.

It might be more reasonable to test something like PLT Scheme against
a good C compiler using Boehm's GC.  In my experience, C projects
using Boehm are few and far between, so that's not a good basis for 
comparison in the average case.

Z.