4 ms·

That good performance is not trivial to achieve is not really here nor there. Haskell is a difficult language and many people come into it with assumptions that

That good performance is not trivial to achieve is not really here nor there. Haskell is a difficult language and many people come into it with assumptions that come from imperative or strict languages and don't hold up in a lazy functional language. That there are programmers who are using the language in a non-optimal way, and coming away with reduced performance, is not a mark against the language itself. To the extent that the benchmarks prove anything, they prove that you can write Haskell code to be competitive with or any other language, at least in regards to those specific problems. Of course, it certainly doesn't prove that there are no areas in which Haskell - as a language, not in regards to specific uses - is not in the upper level of performance. As to the web frameworks benchmarks, I can't speak to them, as I don't know whether they were written expertly or with the latest available libraries. Maybe they aren't as fast. Regardless, it's clear that it's more than possible to write very performant code in Haskell, so ruling it out on those grounds makes little sense.

platz 13y ago
I don't think I made a mark against the language itself, or tried to rule it out, or tried to indicate it cannot attain the highest levels of performance - Yes, my point was just that there are programmers using Haskell in a non-optimal way. Beginners seem to be surprised when their Haskell code isn't automatically in the upper level. I'm not really a great fan of benchmarks, or this particular benchmark, but at least the source of every test is available: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/wai/bench/wai.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast... https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/snap/bench/src/Main.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast... https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/yesod/bench/src/yesod.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...
- igouy 13y ago
  > at least the source of every test is available Also true of the benchmarks game. (Also the command line used to compile and run the program, etc)
  - platz 13y ago
    Except the code used in the benchmarks game is hardly idiomatic
    - igouy 13y ago
      According to who's idea of what is or isn't idiomatic? Yours? Don Stewart's? http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html Is this "idiomatic": http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=meteor&lang=ghc&id=4 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... "One can, with sufficient effort, essentially write C code in Haskell using various unsafe primitives. We would argue that this is not true to the spirit and goals of Haskell, and we have attempted in this paper to remain within the space of “reasonably idiomatic” Haskell. However, we have made abundant use of strictness annotations, explicit strictness, and unboxed vectors. We have, more controversially perhaps, used unsafe array subscripting in places. Are our choices reasonable?" "Measuring the Haskell Gap" http://www.leafpetersen.com/leaf/publications/ifl2013/haskell-gap.pdf http://www.leafpetersen.com/leaf/publications/ifl2013/haskel...
      - platz 13y ago
        The meteor example isn't bad at all, no.
        igouy 13y ago
        Is this idiomatic? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=nbody&lang=ghc&id=2 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes...
        lomnakkus 13y ago
        No, that's not idiomatic Haskell code for an application. Foreign.Ptr (and companions) are hardly ever used in normal Haskell code unless you're optimizing for that last bit of performance -- and even then I'd be very hesitant about using it because of the lack of bounds checking, etc. FWIW, I don't Don Stewart[0] would consider that idiomatic either. He just knows a bit more than the rest of us about how to squeeze more performance out of GHC-compiled code and was willing to use non-idiomatic code to do so. Also FWIW, personally I don't think language shootouts are very informative most of the time, but... IMO they should at least use idiomatic code -- otherwise they tell you even less than they already do about what real-life performance is like. [0] Just an example, I know he didn't contribute the particular benchmark you linked to. He did contribute a few of the other programs AFAIK. I think the following sentences also apply to (essentially) all the Haskell shootout contributors.

platz 13y ago

I don't think I made a mark against the language itself, or tried to rule it out, or tried to indicate it cannot attain the highest levels of performance - Yes, my point was just that there are programmers using Haskell in a non-optimal way. Beginners seem to be surprised when their Haskell code isn't automatically in the upper level. I'm not really a great fan of benchmarks, or this particular benchmark, but at least the source of every test is available: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/wai/bench/wai.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast... https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/snap/bench/src/Main.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast... https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/master/yesod/bench/src/yesod.hs https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...

igouy 13y ago
> at least the source of every test is available Also true of the benchmarks game. (Also the command line used to compile and run the program, etc)
- platz 13y ago
  Except the code used in the benchmarks game is hardly idiomatic
  - igouy 13y ago
    According to who's idea of what is or isn't idiomatic? Yours? Don Stewart's? http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html http://www.willamette.edu/~fruehr/haskell/evolution.html Is this "idiomatic": http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=meteor&lang=ghc&id=4 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes... "One can, with sufficient effort, essentially write C code in Haskell using various unsafe primitives. We would argue that this is not true to the spirit and goals of Haskell, and we have attempted in this paper to remain within the space of “reasonably idiomatic” Haskell. However, we have made abundant use of strictness annotations, explicit strictness, and unboxed vectors. We have, more controversially perhaps, used unsafe array subscripting in places. Are our choices reasonable?" "Measuring the Haskell Gap" http://www.leafpetersen.com/leaf/publications/ifl2013/haskell-gap.pdf http://www.leafpetersen.com/leaf/publications/ifl2013/haskel...
    - platz 13y ago
      The meteor example isn't bad at all, no.
      - igouy 13y ago
        Is this idiomatic? http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=nbody&lang=ghc&id=2 http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?tes...
        lomnakkus 13y ago
        No, that's not idiomatic Haskell code for an application. Foreign.Ptr (and companions) are hardly ever used in normal Haskell code unless you're optimizing for that last bit of performance -- and even then I'd be very hesitant about using it because of the lack of bounds checking, etc. FWIW, I don't Don Stewart[0] would consider that idiomatic either. He just knows a bit more than the rest of us about how to squeeze more performance out of GHC-compiled code and was willing to use non-idiomatic code to do so. Also FWIW, personally I don't think language shootouts are very informative most of the time, but... IMO they should at least use idiomatic code -- otherwise they tell you even less than they already do about what real-life performance is like. [0] Just an example, I know he didn't contribute the particular benchmark you linked to. He did contribute a few of the other programs AFAIK. I think the following sentences also apply to (essentially) all the Haskell shootout contributors.