🚀 go-pugleaf

Mark VanTassel wrote:
> 
> "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)
> 
> - /\/\ark \/anTassel (mvantassel@teambca.com)

Sigh.  The point is the relative speed of function call versus
message send.  Whether a recursive algorithm is better or worse
than the equivalent iterative algorithm simply has nothing to do
with it, because the issue was not "which language can compute
factorials faster," but rather "is a function call faster than
a message send."

The most important case where Smalltalk can be faster than C is when
the initial version of the Smalltalk program is done ten times faster
than the initial C version, and the Smalltalk programmer(s) spend
the remaining time optimizing the code (by using more sophisticated
algorithms, perhaps).

--Alan