[Shootout-list] hackers vs. PHBs

[Isaac Gouy]

--- Brandon J. Van Every 
> > Here we have a fundamental difference of philosophy.  You think the
> > shootout is about each 'hacker' having a 'fun time' evaluating 
> > languages according to personal preference.  I think the Shootout
is
> > about 'PHBs' looking up 'winning scores' to decide whether to
> > approve the use of some newfangled language. 

Seems like the difference between open-curiousity and providing "proof"
for a specific agenda. Doug Bagley provided a fair amount of
curiousity. (And perhaps there's more than one audience for the
Shootout.)


--- Brent Fulgham wrote:
> My intention with the Shootout was to show that Lisp, Eiffel, SML, 
> Erlang, and so forth could all provide useful, competitive solutions.

There are now 11 Lisp & Scheme language implementations included in the
Shootout. Would Lisp & Scheme seem more competitive if there were fewer
language implementations but those few implemented more of the
benchmarks and implemented them well? 


--- Brent Fulgham wrote:
> My great frustration is that even with great timings and memory use 
> for languages ...  I don't know that the Shootout helps much

Then maybe it's a case of unrealistic expectations?

My modest hope is that the information in the Shootout will surprise
some people and allow them to recognise a few more programming language
names. It's progress when someone recognises the name Lisp or Erlang or
ML for a positive reason.

That's why it's important to show more than the name of the
implementation - it's about name recognition.
   http://igouy.port5.com/shoot/ackermann-all50.htm

(Incidentally, there are also some *lousy* timings and memory use -
some Lisp and Scheme on ackermann, Stalin and GHC on wc ...)



		
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