[Shootout-list] fun vs. serious

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Cool, we get to have a very basic disagreement.

Isaac Gouy wrote:
>
> During this little quarrel we should perhaps remember:
>
> FAQ: Why are you doing this?
> To learn and to have fun.

No, actually.  To the extent I'm 'doing' anything here, I'm not here to
have fun.  I'm here to evaluate and promote better languages at the
expense of inferior ones.  Why?  Because I'd like mainstream industry to
use less 'crap' on a daily basis.  I'd like to get paid lots of money to
use languages that aren't 'crap'.  If I thought the Shootout was only a
hobbyist funzie toy, I'd ignore it.  I see it as more about the validity
of open source business models, commercial vs. open source compiler
comparos, etc.

To persuade PHBs, I think it's best to stick to a consistent message.
Like performance.  I'm doubtful that any website could encompass all
aspects of language advocacy, and still be taken seriously by business
types.

> I'm mildly curious what the performance would be like on some
> test with
> run-time checks enabled. Checking anything at runtime is, of course, a
> performance issue - which is why some languages refuse to countenance
> such a thing :-)
>
> Can we address this as a performance issue rather than
> getting into the safety thang?

Ok, look.  Are we even doing a good job at the very basics of the
Shootout at this point?  I feel like I'm hearing a lot of ideas for new
tests / new features, when the old stuff isn't even in particularly good
shape yet.  How's that C# benchmark doing lately?  I'd like to see the
essentials done well, before worrying about R&D issues like how you
define a "safety benchmark."  The only "safety benchmark" I can think
of, would be to provide thousands of unsafe tasks and measure how many
times something fails, and whether the failures are reported.


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

"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
                                - Ed McKenzie