[Shootout-list] Ray tracer

[Bengt Kleberg]

Isaac Gouy wrote:
...deleted
> 3) Most folk have too much to do and too little time - the longer they
> spend figuring out what "their familiar favourite language" programs
> are doing, the less time they can spend exploring what the unfamiliar
> programs are doing. 
> 
> Spend all their attention budget on 500 lines of C and they aren't even
> going to look at OCaml. 

if the benchmark has a (good) language neutral explanation it is 
possible to figure out what it is supposed to do without reading the code.

i think most people are sufficently intelligent to take an interest in 
other languages if they provide sufficient benefits (more 
understandable, faster, smaller, etc).
this even if their own language used 500 lines of code on the problem.


> Personally I'm not interested in officious quarrels about "rules" - 100
> LOCs of Java / C# was a ballpark target for the attention budget of
> someone browsing the website.

while it is much simpler to have no rules it does make for less 
consistency. and it might lead to fear of favoritism.


bengt