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The author has a "lack of equal experience in the three evaluated languages", especially C, but is comparing them for development time and SLOC based on a sampl

The author has a "lack of equal experience in the three evaluated languages", especially C, but is comparing them for development time and SLOC based on a sample size of one developer and one very small program. He rewrites a distributed program as a threaded one, because Rust and Go didn't have a distributed computing library, but says Go and Rust have "similar performance" in HPC. He says he was surprised at the C performance, but there's no investigation of a cause. Maybe just because C is slow... I don't mean to be overly critical, but these results in the paper mean absolutely nothing. It's a waste of time.

pnathan 11y ago
pretty sure all programs were multithreaded. I do agree that the advisor should have pushed back lots harder on the methods; it's a weak paper, even as an experience report.
- hurin 11y ago
  > I do agree that the advisor should have pushed back lots harder on the methods; it's a weak paper, even as an experience report. I agree - this seems to be mostly the advisors fault, by the looks of it it's not that the student didn't put a lot of work into it but methodological problems are what advisors are supposed to be there to address; I saw a lot of this back in college, at least with technical papers it's easy to tell what's wrong, with the humanities it's just a complete disaster.
istvan__ 11y ago
I agree with your assessment only thing I did not understand is the Erlang integration with other languages. I am not sure if he is saying that NIFs are bad or he is saying there are is not support for other languages. I think non of these are true... http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/introduction.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/introduction.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/nif.html#id64792 http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/nif.html#id64792
Dewie3 11y ago
It's a bachelor thesis... probably doesn't aspire to be the new authority on HPC. :)
- hurin 11y ago
  Yes, because the point is being able to write (on a resume): successfully presented thesis on "Evaluation of C, Go, and Rust in the HPC environment". The advisors should have encouraged a smaller and more manageable scope with a more thorough methodology where the results would actually be worth something.
  - acadien 11y ago
    The goal is for the student to get some experience with performing their own research wherever that may lead them. This is actually a pretty impressive piece of independent work for an undergrad.
    - hurin 11y ago
      > The goal is for the student to get some experience with performing their own research wherever that may lead them. You mean it has nothing to do with learning correct methodology or actually doing real research?
      - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
        "Correct methodology" and "real research" are very subjective things. We often judge too harshly, and as long as the paper is not misleading, you can judge it's merits directly without resorting to non-science.
        hurin 11y ago
        > "Correct methodology" and "real research" are very subjective things. That's exactly the attitude emblematic of the portion of academics producing worthless output. Here is a recent reference: http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-1.17001 http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-... Not a methodological problem?
panic 11y ago
I agree that the paper isn't very convincing. One conclusion you might draw is that learning to write performant code in C is harder than learning to write performant code in Rust. That could just be a side-effect of Rust's much stronger standard library, though.

pnathan 11y ago

pretty sure all programs were multithreaded. I do agree that the advisor should have pushed back lots harder on the methods; it's a weak paper, even as an experience report.

hurin 11y ago
> I do agree that the advisor should have pushed back lots harder on the methods; it's a weak paper, even as an experience report. I agree - this seems to be mostly the advisors fault, by the looks of it it's not that the student didn't put a lot of work into it but methodological problems are what advisors are supposed to be there to address; I saw a lot of this back in college, at least with technical papers it's easy to tell what's wrong, with the humanities it's just a complete disaster.

istvan__ 11y ago

I agree with your assessment only thing I did not understand is the Erlang integration with other languages. I am not sure if he is saying that NIFs are bad or he is saying there are is not support for other languages. I think non of these are true... http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/introduction.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/introduction.html http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/nif.html#id64792 http://www.erlang.org/doc/tutorial/nif.html#id64792

Dewie3 11y ago

It's a bachelor thesis... probably doesn't aspire to be the new authority on HPC. :)

hurin 11y ago
Yes, because the point is being able to write (on a resume): successfully presented thesis on "Evaluation of C, Go, and Rust in the HPC environment". The advisors should have encouraged a smaller and more manageable scope with a more thorough methodology where the results would actually be worth something.
- acadien 11y ago
  The goal is for the student to get some experience with performing their own research wherever that may lead them. This is actually a pretty impressive piece of independent work for an undergrad.
  - hurin 11y ago
    > The goal is for the student to get some experience with performing their own research wherever that may lead them. You mean it has nothing to do with learning correct methodology or actually doing real research?
    - seanmcdirmid 11y ago
      "Correct methodology" and "real research" are very subjective things. We often judge too harshly, and as long as the paper is not misleading, you can judge it's merits directly without resorting to non-science.
      - hurin 11y ago
        > "Correct methodology" and "real research" are very subjective things. That's exactly the attitude emblematic of the portion of academics producing worthless output. Here is a recent reference: http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-1.17001 http://www.nature.com/news/psychology-journal-bans-p-values-... Not a methodological problem?

panic 11y ago

I agree that the paper isn't very convincing. One conclusion you might draw is that learning to write performant code in C is harder than learning to write performant code in Rust. That could just be a side-effect of Rust's much stronger standard library, though.