Considering purely speed with most kinds of
mathmatical algorithms leads you to think C is better to
Perl. However, modern computing power almost makes this
problem a non-issue for anything but 3D games or high end
simulators.
Well, realtime 3D is my field of choice, which gives
me some appreciation for C. :-)
It's rather naive to say that, in general, program
speed doesn't matter because (a) modern computers are just
so damn fast that they chew through any problem in no time
or (b) any program can be made fast enough by throwing
hardware at it, because modern hardware is so cheap for
what you get. Even in good ol' web automation, which many
people think of as the only thing that Perl's good for (lo
these many years ago, I was victim to this fallacy), speed
is important, especially on large data sets.
But especially on large data sets, it isn't language
speed that's important, it's algorithm speed, first
of all asymptotic order, that's vitally important. It
doesn't matter whether your language of choice runs a
thousand times faster than mine, statement for statement;
if your program is O(n^2) and mine is O(n), on even remotely
large data sets I'm going to win. That's the point.
Forget about language-speed pissing contests. Pick up an
algorithms book and start learning.
--
:wq
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