3 ms·

I would say a real secret weapon for startups would be C++. If your service/product is 10 to 20x faster than your competitors using mainly interpreted or GC lan

by typon 7y ago

I would say a real secret weapon for startups would be C++. If your service/product is 10 to 20x faster than your competitors using mainly interpreted or GC languages... That extra bit of performance is something you can actually market and sell. Also extra performance allows you to do more stuff for the same time frame, so you can trade it off with more features. Write C++ in a modern, functional way and its a very productive language.

mepian 7y ago
The performance gap between C++ and GC languages like Ocaml and Common Lisp is much smaller than 10x. Here's one example where Common Lisp yielded literally the same performance as C++: https://m00natic.github.io/lisp/manual-jit.html#orgd043a43 https://m00natic.github.io/lisp/manual-jit.html#orgd043a43
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  There's more than raw execution speed. There's footprint, which affects how soon you have to scale (hint: 100X sooner with GC/interpreted systems). There's latency which can be highly irregular in GC systems and can result in very confusing behavior/bugs. Modern systems can remove lots of complexity and enable fast prototyping, which we are all aware of. But it comes with a cost, and that cost (e.g. having to deal with scaling much, much sooner) hits at a sensitive time in startup growth.
- typon 7y ago
  The final code in the "Squeezing performance 2" section looks scary. I'll admit I'm not an expert in CL and have only written Clojure, but that does not look like idiomatic CL. A good comparison would be idiomatic C++ vs. idiomatic CL. If this is idiomatic CL, then i'm really surprised at the performance.
blub 7y ago
This may be a specific case of a more general rule: use proven, boring tools that get the job done and focus your efforts on sales, marketing, people management and the business itself.
goto11 7y ago
Do you know of any startup which have done that successfully? I would suspect it is only for very specific application where you would realize a 20x speedup in reality and where it would be a competitive advantage.
allenleein 7y ago
If anyone wanna try: A native compiler backend for PureScript (via C++) https://github.com/pure-c/purec https://github.com/pure-c/purec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwcwXea0in4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwcwXea0in4

by typon 7y ago

mepian 7y ago

The performance gap between C++ and GC languages like Ocaml and Common Lisp is much smaller than 10x. Here's one example where Common Lisp yielded literally the same performance as C++: https://m00natic.github.io/lisp/manual-jit.html#orgd043a43 https://m00natic.github.io/lisp/manual-jit.html#orgd043a43

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
There's more than raw execution speed. There's footprint, which affects how soon you have to scale (hint: 100X sooner with GC/interpreted systems). There's latency which can be highly irregular in GC systems and can result in very confusing behavior/bugs. Modern systems can remove lots of complexity and enable fast prototyping, which we are all aware of. But it comes with a cost, and that cost (e.g. having to deal with scaling much, much sooner) hits at a sensitive time in startup growth.
typon 7y ago
The final code in the "Squeezing performance 2" section looks scary. I'll admit I'm not an expert in CL and have only written Clojure, but that does not look like idiomatic CL. A good comparison would be idiomatic C++ vs. idiomatic CL. If this is idiomatic CL, then i'm really surprised at the performance.

blub 7y ago

This may be a specific case of a more general rule: use proven, boring tools that get the job done and focus your efforts on sales, marketing, people management and the business itself.

goto11 7y ago

Do you know of any startup which have done that successfully? I would suspect it is only for very specific application where you would realize a 20x speedup in reality and where it would be a competitive advantage.

allenleein 7y ago

If anyone wanna try: A native compiler backend for PureScript (via C++) https://github.com/pure-c/purec https://github.com/pure-c/purec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwcwXea0in4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwcwXea0in4