Re:x2 Use Perl wisely, not cleverly (The Great Computer Language Shootout & Fred Brooks)

[grinder]

Methinks you must be referring to Doug Bagley's Great Computer Language Shootout. This was a subject of discussion here... aah, I've managed to tease it out of Super Search: Perl speed VS. other languages.

I wrote to Doug a while back and pointed out that a number of his Perl programs were sub-optimal. For instance, I said that his Fibonacci sequence generator was suboptimal, because a clever (sic) Perl programmer would Memoize the function for a nice speed boost. He replied, and I quote (hope you don't mind Doug) I do not allow caching for those tests because they are supposed to be done in the "same way", as I define in the methodology page.

I fully accept this point of view, even thougth I don't agree with it. But it's hard to know to know where to draw the line, to figure out what it is you're supposed to be testing. My personal view would be along the lines of "the end justifies the means", if you get my drift.

<update>What I mean by this is that I usually consider these comparative programming exercises more an interface issue than an implementation issue. That is, all I care about are the results. If it passes all the regression test, and is fast as well, I don't care if it's written on punch cards, or transmitted by Morse operators. Therefore I find the argument that they are supposed to be done in the "same way" slightly misguided. All that really counts are the verifiable results. And this is why Inline::C is so nice. It's so easy to code the inner inner loops in your slow (sic) Perl program and speed things up by an order of magnitude.</update>

The flowcharts quote comes from Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month. Recommended reading. The exact quote is "Show me your flowcharts and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won t usually need your flowcharts; they'll be obvious."

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