[Shootout-list] Safety vs. speed

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Peter Hinely wrote:
>
> I think it would be good to have a column on the shootout indicating
> whether the entry is "safe" or not.

I am becoming concerned that people aren't terribly focused on the core
mission of the Shootout.  The core mission is, or at least historically
has been, performance.

We can't spare people an understanding of safety concerns by adding up
some number about them.  There's no benchmark you can run about safety.
Any number or weight you might assign to it is just someone's
gobbledygook opinion, it's not measureable.  Performance benchmarks are
enough of a lie as it stands; can we please avoid even more blatant
lies?

If people want to expand the mission of the Shootout, if they want to
make it very broad and encompass all aspects of language comparison,
then we need to discuss the consequences of that.  The first consequence
is the Shootout will no longer be focused on performance, and hence not
useful / respectable for making valid performance comparisons.  Quality
of benchmarking will get lost in the shuffle.  Stuff won't get updated.
People will be worrying about this, that, and the other thing instead of
whether the performance numbers are good data.

Second, there's another project afoot to compare languages
qualitatively, the PLEAC project.
http://pleac.sourceforge.net/  Why not give these sorts of jobs to them?
It's better for people to actually know what the hell they're doing.
Rather than trying to define, say, statically vs. dynamically typed
languages as "60% safe."


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.