10 ms·

The web page rubs me the wrong way. How can you claim to be the fastest anything without a single benchmark? How can you claim to be a "scripting language" wh

The web page rubs me the wrong way. How can you claim to be the fastest anything without a single benchmark? How can you claim to be a "scripting language" when you're statically-typed and compile to C++? What does "scripting language" even mean then? How can you say things like "it will be a bit slow the first time but subsequent runs will load much faster than any VM." Any VM? Are you really "much faster" than: $ time lua empty.lua real 0m0.005s user 0m0.002s sys 0m0.002s $ time ./luajit empty.lua real 0m0.005s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.002s Maybe there's cool stuff going on here but I can't get past being annoyed at these over-hyped claims.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago
My "good enough" definition: a scripting language is a language that does not require you to write a main() function or define a class / object in order to produce output and features automatic memory management.
- chc 14y ago
  So Common Lisp and Fortran are scripting languages? This test seems to be more like "Is the language heavily influenced by C or C++?"
  - ciupicri 14y ago
    Then add it's easy to create one-liners.
    - aaronblohowiak 14y ago
      I will add this as a great qualifier, though i fear the day where someone says that APL is a scripting language ;)
      - ciupicri 14y ago
        I'm not familiar with APL, but after seeing the examples from Wikipedia [1], I think I know what you mean: # generates a typical set of Pick 6 lottery numbers x[⍋x←6?40] # finds all prime numbers from 1 to R (~R∊R∘.×R)/R←1↓⍳R # game of life life←{↑1 ⍵∨.∧3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵} [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29#Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29#...
dkersten 14y ago
Indeed. In my experience, LuaJIT is insanely fast and is widely considered to be one of the fastest dynamic languages around. The term "scripting language" is, in my opinion, meaningless these days, but either way, claiming to be as faster than LuaJIT and aiming to be faster than C (while compiling to C++? [1]) and not demonstrating this to be true just seems pretentious. [1] I guess it should be faster than hand-written C, which is, of course, possible. ATS supposedly generates C code which is very competitive.
zem 14y ago
are you referring to the "The fastest scripting language on Earth" tagline? i saw that as a way to say "look, this is a compiled language that you can use as a scripting language" with a touch of whimsical humour.
- haberman 14y ago
  Interesting. If that's the way it is intended I missed it completely; I'd definitely be much more receptive to that line of meaning.
  - Yttrill 14y ago
    Python and Lua are both compiled languages, almost all languages are compiled these days. They compile to bytecode rather than native machine code, then run an interpreter which may well do on-the-fly compilation to machine code (JIT). Bytecode target makes the compiler platform independent. Felix does the same, except the "bytecode" is ISO Standard C++.
    - stcredzero 14y ago
      Python and Lua are both compiled languages, almost all languages are compiled these days. For some strange reason, certain misconceptions in CS/programming have half-lives measured in several decades, such as this annoying distinction between interpreters/VMs/compiled languages. We're at least 20 years out from interpreters being meaningfully distinct from VMs and compiled languages.
      - haberman 14y ago
        > We're at least 20 years out from interpreters being meaningfully distinct from VMs and compiled languages. Compiled languages generally don't support eval. That's a pretty meaningful difference.
        stcredzero 14y ago
        > Compiled languages generally don't support eval. Python is compiled to bytecode. It supports eval. So does Smalltalk. Lua would fall into this category as well, and a whole bunch of others. I don't think "compiled" means what you think it means anymore, which is my whole point.
Yttrill 14y ago
Macbook Pro: ~/felix>flx --test=build/release --static mt ~/felix>time ./mt real 0m0.004s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.002s ~/felix>time ../lua-5.2.1/src/lua mt.lua real 0m0.006s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.003s
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- aDevilInMe 14y ago
  What are the LuaJIT timings on the same machine also is this the proof that it is "The fastest scripting language on Earth."? Please provide your profiling results with the languages tested, the files ran and the timings.

aaronblohowiak 14y ago

My "good enough" definition: a scripting language is a language that does not require you to write a main() function or define a class / object in order to produce output and features automatic memory management.

chc 14y ago
So Common Lisp and Fortran are scripting languages? This test seems to be more like "Is the language heavily influenced by C or C++?"
- ciupicri 14y ago
  Then add it's easy to create one-liners.
  - aaronblohowiak 14y ago
    I will add this as a great qualifier, though i fear the day where someone says that APL is a scripting language ;)
    - ciupicri 14y ago
      I'm not familiar with APL, but after seeing the examples from Wikipedia [1], I think I know what you mean: # generates a typical set of Pick 6 lottery numbers x[⍋x←6?40] # finds all prime numbers from 1 to R (~R∊R∘.×R)/R←1↓⍳R # game of life life←{↑1 ⍵∨.∧3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵} [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29#Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29#...

dkersten 14y ago

Indeed. In my experience, LuaJIT is insanely fast and is widely considered to be one of the fastest dynamic languages around. The term "scripting language" is, in my opinion, meaningless these days, but either way, claiming to be as faster than LuaJIT and aiming to be faster than C (while compiling to C++? [1]) and not demonstrating this to be true just seems pretentious. [1] I guess it should be faster than hand-written C, which is, of course, possible. ATS supposedly generates C code which is very competitive.

zem 14y ago

are you referring to the "The fastest scripting language on Earth" tagline? i saw that as a way to say "look, this is a compiled language that you can use as a scripting language" with a touch of whimsical humour.

haberman 14y ago
Interesting. If that's the way it is intended I missed it completely; I'd definitely be much more receptive to that line of meaning.
- Yttrill 14y ago
  Python and Lua are both compiled languages, almost all languages are compiled these days. They compile to bytecode rather than native machine code, then run an interpreter which may well do on-the-fly compilation to machine code (JIT). Bytecode target makes the compiler platform independent. Felix does the same, except the "bytecode" is ISO Standard C++.
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Python and Lua are both compiled languages, almost all languages are compiled these days. For some strange reason, certain misconceptions in CS/programming have half-lives measured in several decades, such as this annoying distinction between interpreters/VMs/compiled languages. We're at least 20 years out from interpreters being meaningfully distinct from VMs and compiled languages.
    - haberman 14y ago
      > We're at least 20 years out from interpreters being meaningfully distinct from VMs and compiled languages. Compiled languages generally don't support eval. That's a pretty meaningful difference.
      - stcredzero 14y ago
        > Compiled languages generally don't support eval. Python is compiled to bytecode. It supports eval. So does Smalltalk. Lua would fall into this category as well, and a whole bunch of others. I don't think "compiled" means what you think it means anymore, which is my whole point.

Yttrill 14y ago

Macbook Pro: ~/felix>flx --test=build/release --static mt ~/felix>time ./mt real 0m0.004s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.002s ~/felix>time ../lua-5.2.1/src/lua mt.lua real 0m0.006s user 0m0.001s sys 0m0.003s

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
aDevilInMe 14y ago
What are the LuaJIT timings on the same machine also is this the proof that it is "The fastest scripting language on Earth."? Please provide your profiling results with the languages tested, the files ran and the timings.