[Shootout-list] when benchmarks are advocacy

[Bengt Kleberg]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
...deleted
> I think the 'main, frontlined' composite score should obey the Least
> Common Denominator of all the languages.  It should not include any
> tests for language-specific features, like garbage collection or
> concurrency or thread locking or big integers or whatever.  I mean, why
> should C++ be penalized just because Erlang has some great concurrency
> stuff in it?  I'm not personally writing a concurrent application, I
> don't care.

would it be ok if i asked that erlang is not penalised because c has 
some great line oriented i/o stuff in it? :-)
seriously, should a minimalistic language be able to rule out tests of 
features that it lacks? what if somebody enters intercal :-)


> - garbage collection
> - thread control
> - big number support
> - safety (if someone can define an acceptable test)
> 
> or whatever.  These should not be combined with the primary language
> score.  Some languages wouldn't be able to have these secondary scores,
> i.e. no inherent support in the language for the capability.

this is a good idea. i have been thinking about this ever since i 
noticed that c was doing ok on the object instantiation test. c does not 
have objects!
one way would be to subgroup the test in object oriented tests, i/o 
test, string tests, etc. it would help people do ignore the kind of 
features they do not need.


> We'd also
> need to decide what's ok to have in a library and what must be in the
> language proper.

how do you define a library?
how do you define the language proper?

while i agree with you in principle, i have not raised the question 
since it seemed to complex for the shooutout.


bengt