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While it’s nice to compare languages with simple idiomatic code I think it’s unfair to developers to show them the performance of an entirely empty function bod
by blixt 2y ago
While it’s nice to compare languages with simple idiomatic code I think it’s unfair to developers to show them the performance of an entirely empty function body and graphs with bars that focus on only one variable. It paints a picture that you can safely pick language X because it had the smaller bar.
I urge anyone making decisions from looking at these graphs to run this benchmark themselves and add two things:
- Add at least the most minimal real world task inside of these function bodies to get a better feel for how the languages use memory
- Measure the duration in addition to the memory to get a feel for the difference in scheduling between the languages
- tossandthrow 2y agoThis urge is as old as statistics. And I dare to say that most people after reading the article in question are well prepared to use the results for what they are.
- blixt 2y agoI can’t say I share your optimism. I’ve seen plenty of developers point to graphs like these as a reason for why they picked a language or framework for a problem. And it comes down to the benchmark how good of a proxy it actually is for such problems. I just hope that with enough feedback the author would consider making the benchmark more nuanced to paint a picture of why these differences in languages exist (as opposed to saying which languages “lose” or “win”).
- sfn42 2y agoAnd by use the results for what they are you mean ignore them because they are completely useless?