Minimalism is a tempting proxy for performance, but it often isn't. rg/ag/pt aren't some of the fastest file searchers around because they're short and don't pu

Minimalism is a tempting proxy for performance, but it often isn't. rg/ag/pt aren't some of the fastest file searchers around because they're short and don't pull cool tricks. Another example: GNU vs BSD grep, from the author's mouth: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-August/019310.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug... Regex matching: https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html https://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html (It's arguable that a backtracking implementation is not the simplest, although I think it is -- and even if it is, a FSA compiler clearly isn't!) And, finally: people tell me Clojure is slow, and I tell them that it lets me write correct concurrent algorithms I understand. (See alioth shootout results.)