[Shootout-list] request to put MLton on "The Usual" page

[Jon Harrop]

On Tuesday 07 June 2005 23:20, Brent Fulgham wrote:
> --- Stephen Weeks <sweeks@sweeks.com> wrote:
> > I would like to see MLton made the representative of
> > SML on the shootout main page ("The Usual") instead
> > of SML/NJ. MLton implements more benchmarks than
> > SML/NJ and is faster than SML/NJ on most benchmarks
>
> I agree that MLton is one of the best performers on
> the shootout and would be happy to make it more
> widely visible (notice that we have it as the language
> of the month!)

On a related note, the Mlton port of my ray tracer is substantially faster 
than all other entries (that's gcc, icc, g++, icpp, gcj, j2se, g95, ifc, 
smlnj, ocamlc and ocamlopt) and is probably the second most concise 
implementation (after OCaml) to boot.

> However, isn't SML/NJ the 'standard' that other SML's
> try to comply with?  Do you think people would expect
> to see SML/NJ as 'the' SML implementation in a short
> list of representative languages?

I think Cambridge is a bit of an "SML town" and most of the people round here 
thought that SML/NJ was no longer being developed. Everyone I speak to 
recommends Mlton as "the" SML compiler.

> Let's set aside the number of solutions for the
> moment.  If SML/NJ and MLton had the same number
> of solutions on the site, would you still think
> MLton would be more representative of SML than SML/NJ?

Yes, I would.

> Do other people think we should use 'The Usual' to
> show
> the best performers for all languages, or would it
> be better to show the 'best known' implementations
> for various languages?
>
> I'm sort of leaning towards the former (which would
> mean moving MLton to 'The Usual' instead of SML/NJ).
>
> Are there any contrary views?

I'd like to see the best known languages and implementations in "The Usual" 
but I'm calling Mlton the best known SML implementation.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists