Re: Scheme is too complicated

[Jay Glascoe <jglascoe@jay.giss.nasa.gov>]

On 30 Oct 1998, Russ McManus wrote:

> You see Perl doesn't suffer from this phenomena; there is only one
> implementation.  So people compare guile and perl and say 'scheme
> is slow!.'  This isn't fair; _guile_ is slow.
> 
> Am I making any sense at all?
> 

I think we're talking about completely different things.

I'm used to writing C extensions for compute intensive tasks, and then
using Perl/Python to glue the extensions together and provide the top
level logic of the program.  It's like the inner-most loops are in C and
the outer loops are in Perl/Python.  btw, I made the switch to Python from
Perl because Perl C extensions are UGLY, and the API is totally bizarre --
God never intended for Perl to be an extension language. 

So Guile is easily fast enough for me (err, well, I wish it wasn't so damn
slow at input/output operations, but I think that'll soon be fixed).
When I say functional code is slow, I mean e.g., equivalent imperative
style code, written in the same language, run by the same interpreter, is
probably faster.  Perhaps even a LOT faster. 

> 
> Which is worse: ignorance or apathy?  Who knows? Who cares?
>