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In fairness, in-place sorting usually isn't what you want in functional programming. Immutable data structures help enforce the pure functional constraints. Of

In fairness, in-place sorting usually isn't what you want in functional programming. Immutable data structures help enforce the pure functional constraints. Of course, in practice, your library code will probably make a mutable copy, sort that in-place and then return an immutable copy/representation of the result, which is hopefully more efficient. (Disclaimer: I'm no Haskell programmer; my FP experience is limited to Lisp dialects) EDIT: As a curious example, Clojure's sort function actually converts the sequence to a (Java) Array and calls java.util.Arrays.sort() on it, then turns it back into a sequence: https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/b578c69d7480f621841ebcafdfa98e33fcb765f6/src/clj/clojure/core.clj#L2329 https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/b578c69d7480f621841e...

sizzla 16y ago
Advancing compilers is hard. When people argue efficiency as a compiler implementation detail that is going to get worked out, they forget about many who have fallen before them. You can argue some older languages were written in a way in which it was (reasonably) easy to write a compiler that generates code with little performance overhead when compared to assembly (at worst a factor of 2 to 4, back in the 80s). Some popular languages keep adding abstractions and constructs that the compiler can actually deal with without some new compiler research breakthrough.
- neilc 16y ago
  When people argue efficiency as a compiler implementation detail that is going to get worked out, they forget about many who have fallen before them. Yes; see also http://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html http://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html
  - sizzla 16y ago
    Thanks. Beatifully written and I love the print-shop analogy. It's nice he is into the C&C Portland Wiki, there's golden nuggets of wisdom everywhere. I am reposting the link from his blog. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler Personally of the higher-level languages, I found SBCL to be crazy good at optimizing, of course given a few nudges with a compiler directive or two. By inspecting the dissasembly, I could validate it was doing the "right-thing" (TM), but then again, I do the same to check the C/C++ compiled code.

sizzla 16y ago

Advancing compilers is hard. When people argue efficiency as a compiler implementation detail that is going to get worked out, they forget about many who have fallen before them. You can argue some older languages were written in a way in which it was (reasonably) easy to write a compiler that generates code with little performance overhead when compared to assembly (at worst a factor of 2 to 4, back in the 80s). Some popular languages keep adding abstractions and constructs that the compiler can actually deal with without some new compiler research breakthrough.

neilc 16y ago
When people argue efficiency as a compiler implementation detail that is going to get worked out, they forget about many who have fallen before them. Yes; see also http://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html http://prog21.dadgum.com/40.html
- sizzla 16y ago
  Thanks. Beatifully written and I love the print-shop analogy. It's nice he is into the C&C Portland Wiki, there's golden nuggets of wisdom everywhere. I am reposting the link from his blog. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler Personally of the higher-level languages, I found SBCL to be crazy good at optimizing, of course given a few nudges with a compiler directive or two. By inspecting the dissasembly, I could validate it was doing the "right-thing" (TM), but then again, I do the same to check the C/C++ compiled code.