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I've always wondered why language designers don't strive to optimize for the trivial cases. There is a natural way to design code for a beginner, and having th

by kruhft 15y ago

I've always wondered why language designers don't strive to optimize for the trivial cases. There is a natural way to design code for a beginner, and having that map to the most efficient constructs seems to be one of the areas of programming language research that is lacking. Maybe it's the need for the 'sufficiently smart compiler' that is holding things back, but given that PLs are abstractions, couldn't the underlying abstraction be completely different than the user visible abstractions?

pcwalton 15y ago
In the design of Rust, as a rule of thumb, we've always tried to make the simplest code also the fastest code, to minimize performance footguns. (Writing the Rust compiler in Rust and constantly running it through Instruments.app helps to keep us honest.)
Periodic 15y ago
I believe they do optimize for the simple cases, but just in very different ways. Haskell optimizes for composition, abstraction and expressiveness in a function-application sense. C optimizes for imperative loops, simple functions and controlling your memory layout and execution precisely [There is probably a better characterization of C, please comment]. I think there are plenty of tricks involved in writing performant C code that aren't obvious. Things like cache behavior, memory access patterns, etc. The job of the compiler and PL is to help us by making it unnecessary to worry about such things unless we really need to. It's a testament to the power of modern programming languages and computer speeds that there are many programmers who don't understand registers, caches, assembly, virtual memory, etc.
stcredzero 15y ago
There is a natural way to design code for a beginner Smalltalk was purposely aimed at children. The thing is, our culture is quite complicated, and there are expectations set up in different fields. A grade school child might find operator precedence confusing, while an engineer would view it as second nature and a non-negotiable feature. Likewise, someone steeped in the Unix way of doing things might find a language incorporating Sed/Awk syntax to be very "intuitive" while someone from a different discipline might find it to be cryptic. given that PLs are abstractions, couldn't the underlying abstraction be completely different than the user visible abstractions? They almost always are for PL.

by kruhft 15y ago

pcwalton 15y ago

In the design of Rust, as a rule of thumb, we've always tried to make the simplest code also the fastest code, to minimize performance footguns. (Writing the Rust compiler in Rust and constantly running it through Instruments.app helps to keep us honest.)

Periodic 15y ago

I believe they do optimize for the simple cases, but just in very different ways. Haskell optimizes for composition, abstraction and expressiveness in a function-application sense. C optimizes for imperative loops, simple functions and controlling your memory layout and execution precisely [There is probably a better characterization of C, please comment]. I think there are plenty of tricks involved in writing performant C code that aren't obvious. Things like cache behavior, memory access patterns, etc. The job of the compiler and PL is to help us by making it unnecessary to worry about such things unless we really need to. It's a testament to the power of modern programming languages and computer speeds that there are many programmers who don't understand registers, caches, assembly, virtual memory, etc.

stcredzero 15y ago

There is a natural way to design code for a beginner Smalltalk was purposely aimed at children. The thing is, our culture is quite complicated, and there are expectations set up in different fields. A grade school child might find operator precedence confusing, while an engineer would view it as second nature and a non-negotiable feature. Likewise, someone steeped in the Unix way of doing things might find a language incorporating Sed/Awk syntax to be very "intuitive" while someone from a different discipline might find it to be cryptic. given that PLs are abstractions, couldn't the underlying abstraction be completely different than the user visible abstractions? They almost always are for PL.