RE: ++CD-ROM drive

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

YBT

>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Shore <jshore@example.com> writes:

    >> From: Stephen J. Turnbull [mailto:turnbull@example.com]

    >> Lisp.

    Jonathan> Hmm, he did mention *efficient* here - maybe lisp
    Jonathan> qualifies by another standard.

"Efficient" is relative.  All procedural languages suck compared to
listing up all possible inputs in a hash table.

Here the sensible definition is "are the templates as efficient as
individually coded functions/data structures?"  For C++ the answer is
"often enough for government work."  For Lisp (macros) the answer is
"invariably they are _more_ efficient, except for some jobs that can't
be done by function call so there's no comparison."

As for "efficient as C or C++", well, I'll leave that for another
bridge....  But don't believe that all FUD originates in Redmond.
Plenty comes out of Murray Hill, too.  For starters:

http://www.ai.mit.edu/docs/articles/good-news/good-news.html

Yeah, it's ten years old.  But if Common Lisp implementations were
beating C back then, there's no reason why they won't still beat it.

    Jonathan> Last time I checked the lisp/scheme groups they were
    Jonathan> still talking about GC algorithms (and that after 10+
    Jonathan> years).  Interesting topic but it gives you an idea of
    Jonathan> some of the problems with the language.

[Speaking of Java, Perl, and Python ....]

Get eddicated: http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html


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