[clean-list] Re: (digest):Matrices, memory and efficiency

[Siegfried Gonzi]

clean-list-admin@cs.kun.nl wrote:

> John van Groningen answers the questions related to Clean.
> I only add:
>
> A garbage collector in a monolithic system may be much more
> efficient than a "plug-in" GC attached to the run-time
> of a compiled language.

I am not a programming specialist but what do you mean?

> ====
>
> I see no sense in comparing the speed of interpreted and compiled
> languages, unless the compilation is for a similar virtual
> machine, or if you are a prophet trying to convince people that
> interpreters are not as bad as that.
>

I see. Why? If someone claims: "Forth a modern language for scientific
computing", I think that should be proofed, and especially because Forthler
think that they are state of the art.

It was not my intention to pun Forthler. But first I really thought Forth is
as fast as Fortran. That with interpreting is confusing ( and there are oft
long threads in comp.lang.forth). And I really thought a dictionary entry is
like a compiled function.

But to be honest. Mops itself is only based on Forth and Smalltalk. I red, a
time ago, an article that Mops was comparative in speed with
matrix-matrix-multiplication and Fortran on the Mac.
The problem is that it is hard to program numerics in object-oriented style.

I did my multiplication based on ANS-Forth (which is possible to include in
Mops). And it seems that this is interpeted.


Regards,
Siegfried Gonzi

>