[Shootout-list] Safety vs. speed

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Peter Hinely wrote:
>
> >> For integers:  Whether integers silently overflow or not.
>
> > This is orthogonal to what you said above.
>
> That's why I put it in a different paragraph.  I don't get
> your point.

My point is that integer overflow isn't necessarily a safety issue.

> Any
> non-trivial program is going to use integers (and maybe wrongly assume
> that no overflow has occurred).

I don't need a 2GB addressing range for my arrays, usually.  If I'm
doing floating point intensive applications then I am worried about what
the FPU can do, not the integer range.

> To me, knowledge of the speed of a language without regard to
> its safeness is not very useful.

Well, I'm a performance guy.  I think safety is boring.

> Why would I want to switch from C (which I know is
> fast) to language X, unless langauge X performs almost as well as C,
> *plus* language X provides additional safety?

Higher levels of programming abstraction without sacrificing
performance.


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.