[Shootout-list] Safety vs. speed

[Peter Hinely]

Hi,

> Define "safe".

Okay, I'll take a stab at a simple, useable definition.  For bounds
checking and type safety:  Basically, whether the memory of the runtime
itself can be corrupted by a programmer's programming mistake in the
language.  In other words, a corruption so severe is possible that the
exception handling mechanism of the language is not capable of
detecting/handling whatever has happened.

For integers:  Whether integers silently overflow or not.

>
> Personally, I think it's beyond Shootout's mandate.  We're not measuring a
> language's "goodness", just it's "performance".

If that is the case, then perhaps the name of the pages should be changed
from "The Great Computer Language Shootout" to "The Great Computer
Language Performance Shootout" to more accurately reflect that.

Regards,
Peter