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Re: the viability of translators, and Guile itself


>>>>> "Klaus" == Klaus Schilling <Klaus.Schilling@home.ivm.de> writes:

Klaus> Christian Lynbech writes:
>> I believe that the guile *interpreter* compares well to other scheme
>> *interpreters* but does it hold when comparing interpreted guile to
>> compiled rscheme or bigloo or whatever?

Klaus> That's not a fair comparison.

Even if it is not fair, the result is the same. On a system with a
good compiler, the achievable maximum performance (usually) is much
higher than on an interpreted one. The user who has to run the
application does not really care what the developer had to do in order
to get the necessary performance.

If we want guile to become a focal point in the scheme community, we
need to have (to some usefull extent) what other "competing"
implementations have currently.

>> Having a fast interpreter is good enough for many things and most
>> early project phases, but if one wants to write larger applications,
>> with demnands on performance, one will also need to care about the
>> maximum performance that can be achieved, following the traditional
>> wisdom of the develop-debug-profile-optimize cycle.

Klaus> That can be done by writing time-critical parts in C.

Again, I do not think scheme developers accustomed to other
implementations with decent compilers, like this answer. 

I hate programming in C, and if I would have to choose between a
scheme system with a compiler, or something that requires you to use C
to solve performance problems, however well it may integrate with C, I
certainly would go for the former.


---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Christian Lynbech          | Telebit Communications A/S                       
Fax:   +45 8628 8186       | Fabrikvej 11, DK-8260 Viby J
Phone: +45 8628 8177 + 28  | email: chl@tbit.dk --- URL: http://www.tbit.dk
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Hit the philistines three times over the head with the Elisp reference manual.
                                        - petonic@hal.com (Michael A. Petonic)

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