🚀 go-pugleaf

In <4kbfn8$1bu@news1.is.net> mvantassel@teambca.com (Mark VanTassel) writes:

>"Alan L. Lovejoy" <alovejoy@concentric.net> wrote:
>>Bzzzt!  Not according to the benchmarks I've done.  Go benchmark the factorial or fibonacci 
>>functions (implemented recursively) in both C and a good Smalltalk.  You are in for a big
>>surprise.
>You're not seriously suggesting that a fibonacci series be programmed
>recursively, are you??? Have you looked at the number of operations
>involved in calculating, say, the 1000th term as vs a standard looping
>approach?
>I don't think this is a valid benchmark... (and I too fail to see how
>Smalltalk can be faster than C++ except perhaps in bizarre special
>cases)
   True, the Fibonacci and factorial are not good candidates for a
recursive algorithm.  (They're just taught that way because it's one
of the few recursive problems that we can understand in first-year
college courses.)
   On the other hand, almost any interesting program, compiled & run
in different languages, should be able to give a good idea of how the
languages compare.  For my part, I'd also like to look at the source
code, and know how long it took to write (and debug) the two programs.
   So, Alan, I guess you'll have to come up with a program for
Ackermann's Function in C++ and Smalltalk to satisfy the rest of us.

Mike Zorn      ozma@kaiwan.com   |  Thought for the day:
  http://www.kaiwan.com/~ozma/   |    Java is C--