Re: Euphoria vs. other programming languages
- Posted by mattlewis (admin) Mar 04, 2009
- 1576 views
You are forced to write different code for different data types simply to copy the data, ask for its current length, concatenate it, compare it etc. The manuals for those languages are packed with routines such as "strcpy", "strncpy", "memcpy", "strcat", "strlen", "strcmp", "memcmp", etc. that each only work on one of the many types of data. The specialised routines may have been more efficient when C was developed in the 60s. Hardware has changed tremendously ever since.
This is misleading at best. It is almost lying. It only refers to C and C is still more efficient than EU even though the hardware has changed.
I think you have an overly simple view of what 'efficient' means. Most higher level languages claim (rightly so) to be more efficient with programmer time, which at this point is typically more expensive than machine time. So your comment regarding hardware change is exactly why this point is relevant. Overall efficiency is often improved by using higher level languages. Of course, the trade off needs to be evaluated for each application.
Unlike other languages such as LISP and Smalltalk, Euphoria's "garbage collection" of unused storage is a continuous process that never causes random delays in execution of a program, and does not pre-allocate huge regions of memory.
I guess Smalltalk and LISP have better GC's than EU right now. Again, this is misleading, out-of-date and unconvincing. Please emphasize EU's real advantages rather than these misleading "facts".
Is your guess based on anything, or just random? You don't offer any reasons to back it up.
I can't quickly find any details on Smalltalk garbage collection, but this criticism does seem to apply to at least some forms of Lisp. Is your comment based on some other implementation?
These criticisms of GC should definitely be aimed at things like Java or Microsoft's CLR/Mono. Java does allocate large chunks of memory up front. Both of these also do periodic garbage collection, which can cause pauses in the execution. So you're correct that it could be more up to date.
Of course, being convincing is something that's entirely in the eye of the beholder. Clearly, you're not, which is Ok. Fortunately for you, there are other options available.
Matt
