[Shootout-list] Ray tracer

[Isaac Gouy]

--- Jon Harrop <jon@ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
-snip-
> Ultimately: Trying to enforce your own subjective belief of
> equivalence will detract from the objectivity of the shootout, not
add
> to it.

Seems like you just did enforce your own subjective belief!

The ray-tracer programs started out with the same algorithm. Some of us
 wasted our time working on missing interpreted/bytecode languages to
get ray-tracer off The Sandbox and onto the main pages, and then others
started contributing programs in the usual way - and now you've
pulled-the-rug from under them.


-snip-
> > If two different algorithms (and two  
> > different data structures, etc.) are compared, how
> > can we determine what amount of the delta in
> > performance is due to algorithms versus the compiler
> > implementation?
> 
> Users can profile the implementations to determine where the time is
> actually spent.
 
In other words, no one looking at ray-tracer on the website will have
the slightest idea whether some programs simply use a better algorithm.



-snip-
> I appreciate the desire to compare seemingly equivalent programs but
> this is simply not possible in general and, consequently, must be
> dismissed.

We do compare "seemingly" equivalent programs.

We deal with the particular, not the general.



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