Very poor Lisp performance - comp.lang.lisp

Message from discussion Very poor Lisp performance
Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!koehntopp.de!news.rh-tec.net!newsfeed.kamp.net!nntp-peering.plus.net!ptn-nntp-feeder01.plus.net!ptn-nntp-spool01.plus.net!ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net!not-for-mail
Message-Id: <43006c90$0$1220$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net>
From: Jon Harrop <use...@jdh30.plus.com>
Subject: Re: Very poor Lisp performance
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 11:18:27 +0100
References: <42fdd7a8$0$97130$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net> <2005081321013216807%raffaelcavallaro@pasdespamsilvousplaitmaccom> <42ff04a9$0$78285$157c6196@dreader1.cybercity.dk> <42ff1c6e$0$1279$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net> <3m95opF15sleiU1@individual.net> <42ff662a$0$97128$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader03.plus.net> <m3mznksdx9.fsf@rigel.goldenthreadtech.com> <42ff70f5$0$1314$ed2619ec@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net> <HIadne8pK8ustZ3eRVn-hQ@giganews.com>
Organization: Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
User-Agent: KNode/0.8.2
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit
Lines: 29
NNTP-Posting-Host: 80.229.56.224
X-Trace: 1124101264 ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net 1220 80.229.56.224:44796

Luke J Crook wrote:
> How many implementations of Ocaml are there? One. So every developer
> working on Ocaml is hammering that one version. If you want to compare
> Ocaml to an open source language then choose a language for which there
> is but a single implementation; Perl, Python, Parrot, PHP, Ruby etc.

That doesn't really make any sense.

Firstly, the language comparison is with C++, Java and SML as well, all of
which have multiple implementations. Indeed, two implementations of SML are
already on the language comparison. Secondly, of the languages you listed,
at least Perl and Python have multiple implementations. Finally, the number
of implementations is irrelevant.

> If you want to compare Ocaml to a specific implementation of Lisp, then
> target CMUCL, SBCL, CLISP, Lispworks etc. However, if you want to
> compare the performance of Lisp to the performance of Ocaml then choose
> the fastest implementation of Lisp available and run that. Allego,
> Lispworks and Corman (Corman is Windows only) are all free to you for
> this purpose.

We're Linux only, so Corman is out the window. Which of the other Lisp
implementations do you expect to do well at this task?

I'll have a look at Lispworks...

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com