5 ms·

Yes, in the mid nineties one of Delphi's killer features was super fast compiles. Partly possible due to a single pass compiler but it was just a very fast lang

Yes, in the mid nineties one of Delphi's killer features was super fast compiles. Partly possible due to a single pass compiler but it was just a very fast language to compile. Really, most compiled languages except C++ are fast to compile. In the other thread I pointed out that Java compiles very fast, but nobody in the Go community likes to talk about that, it seems. Actually Java does have multi-tiered compilers, so the frontend is very fast as it doesn't optimise, and then the JIT compiler has a fast-but-low-quality compiler and a slower-but-higher-quality compiler, meaning you get the developer benefits of instant turnaround but the code still gets heavily optimised to GCC/LLVM quality in the hot spots.

colin_mccabe 11y ago
I agree that the Java compiler itself runs fast, but many of the surrounding tools in the Java ecosystem are not fast. For example, Maven takes several minutes to rebuild Hadoop. Based on my experiences, neither Gradle nor ant are that much fast than Maven (although they are a bit faster.) I disagree that "most compiled languages... are fast to compile." Scala is relatively slow to compile (I've seen Spark take over an hour to build). OCaml and SML are none too speedy to compile. Rust's compiler is rather slow (they're going to focus on speeding it up, I have heard.) It seems like most compiled languages that people actually use are slow to compile. Go is a big exception due to its conscious decision to focus on fast compile times. This choice wasn't free-- it involved carefully considering tradeoffs. For example, Go compiles source code files unit-by-unit, forgoing global optimizations in the name of time. The grammar of the language is simpler, in order to enable more efficient parsing. Features like operator overloading are not present. It is trivial to tell what is a function call what is not-- there is no "syntactic sugar" like Ruby's function calls without parens.
- sievebrain 11y ago
  Hadoop is 2 million lines of code. Yes, that's going to take a few minutes to compile no matter what language it's written in (if it has a compile stage at all). By "most compiled languages" I guess I was thinking of the most popular ones, not literally all compiled languages. Sloppy phrasing, sorry. The top compiled languages according to TIOBE are Java, C, C++, C# (actually these are the top languages in general). Then they're all scripting languages until position 11 which is Delphi. So those are the top 5 and except for C/C++ they compile fast. OCaml, SML, Haskell, Rust etc are all rather rare languages.
  - colin_mccabe 11y ago
    I don't agree that 2 million lines of code is "going to take a few minutes to compile no matter what [compiled] language it's written in." Based on my experiences with Go so far, I believe Go could get that significantly faster, probably under a minute. Also, the "several minutes" number I quoted is also for incremental compiles where only one very small thing has changed, not just for full compiles, which take even longer. TIOBE is a poor measure of programming language popularity for a lot of reasons. But even if we accept that Java, C, C++, and C# are the top languages, I already commented that Java's build is not that fast in the real world (except for very small projects). I don't have any first-hand experience with C#, but I've never heard anyone claim fast compilation is an advantage of that language. C and C++ are slow builders, as we already know. So the top compiled languages are rather slow compilers, which is one reason why scripting languages (I assume you mean non-ahead-of-time-compiled-languages) became popular in the 2000s. This is one part of what Rob Pike was talking about when he said "poorly designed static type systems drive people to dynamic typing."
    - incepted 11y ago
      > TIOBE is a poor measure of programming language popularity for a lot of reasons. And yet, it is completely consistent with pretty much all other measurements of programming language popularity (github, job postings, StackOverflow answers, etc...). So maybe it's not that poor a measure after all.
      - vorg 11y ago
        According to TIOBE, Groovy rose from 0.33% to 1.8% in the last two months, and from 0.11% to 1.8% in the last 12 months. Click on "Groovy" from the main page and you'll get the graph at http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index?page=Groovy http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index?page=Groovy . Now say "maybe TIOBE's not that poor a measure of programming language popularity" with a straight face. These stats are gamed by language backers to make their language look good when selling consulting services and tickets to conferences, convincing programmers to contribute free work to their product, etc.
    - 11y ago
- airless_cotton 11y ago
  TIL that there are still people who believe that parsing has any impact on compilation speed.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Do you know Walter Bright? The guy that created the first C++ native compiler and one of the D authors? http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/c-compilation-speed/228701711 http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/c-compilation-speed/228701711

colin_mccabe 11y ago

I agree that the Java compiler itself runs fast, but many of the surrounding tools in the Java ecosystem are not fast. For example, Maven takes several minutes to rebuild Hadoop. Based on my experiences, neither Gradle nor ant are that much fast than Maven (although they are a bit faster.) I disagree that "most compiled languages... are fast to compile." Scala is relatively slow to compile (I've seen Spark take over an hour to build). OCaml and SML are none too speedy to compile. Rust's compiler is rather slow (they're going to focus on speeding it up, I have heard.) It seems like most compiled languages that people actually use are slow to compile. Go is a big exception due to its conscious decision to focus on fast compile times. This choice wasn't free-- it involved carefully considering tradeoffs. For example, Go compiles source code files unit-by-unit, forgoing global optimizations in the name of time. The grammar of the language is simpler, in order to enable more efficient parsing. Features like operator overloading are not present. It is trivial to tell what is a function call what is not-- there is no "syntactic sugar" like Ruby's function calls without parens.

sievebrain 11y ago
Hadoop is 2 million lines of code. Yes, that's going to take a few minutes to compile no matter what language it's written in (if it has a compile stage at all). By "most compiled languages" I guess I was thinking of the most popular ones, not literally all compiled languages. Sloppy phrasing, sorry. The top compiled languages according to TIOBE are Java, C, C++, C# (actually these are the top languages in general). Then they're all scripting languages until position 11 which is Delphi. So those are the top 5 and except for C/C++ they compile fast. OCaml, SML, Haskell, Rust etc are all rather rare languages.
- colin_mccabe 11y ago
  I don't agree that 2 million lines of code is "going to take a few minutes to compile no matter what [compiled] language it's written in." Based on my experiences with Go so far, I believe Go could get that significantly faster, probably under a minute. Also, the "several minutes" number I quoted is also for incremental compiles where only one very small thing has changed, not just for full compiles, which take even longer. TIOBE is a poor measure of programming language popularity for a lot of reasons. But even if we accept that Java, C, C++, and C# are the top languages, I already commented that Java's build is not that fast in the real world (except for very small projects). I don't have any first-hand experience with C#, but I've never heard anyone claim fast compilation is an advantage of that language. C and C++ are slow builders, as we already know. So the top compiled languages are rather slow compilers, which is one reason why scripting languages (I assume you mean non-ahead-of-time-compiled-languages) became popular in the 2000s. This is one part of what Rob Pike was talking about when he said "poorly designed static type systems drive people to dynamic typing."
  - incepted 11y ago
    > TIOBE is a poor measure of programming language popularity for a lot of reasons. And yet, it is completely consistent with pretty much all other measurements of programming language popularity (github, job postings, StackOverflow answers, etc...). So maybe it's not that poor a measure after all.
    - vorg 11y ago
      According to TIOBE, Groovy rose from 0.33% to 1.8% in the last two months, and from 0.11% to 1.8% in the last 12 months. Click on "Groovy" from the main page and you'll get the graph at http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index?page=Groovy http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe_index?page=Groovy . Now say "maybe TIOBE's not that poor a measure of programming language popularity" with a straight face. These stats are gamed by language backers to make their language look good when selling consulting services and tickets to conferences, convincing programmers to contribute free work to their product, etc.
  - 11y ago
airless_cotton 11y ago
TIL that there are still people who believe that parsing has any impact on compilation speed.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Do you know Walter Bright? The guy that created the first C++ native compiler and one of the D authors? http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/c-compilation-speed/228701711 http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/c-compilation-speed/228701711