

How to make Lisp go faster than C - dpapathanasiou
http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier/research/verna.06.imecs.pdf

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jimbokun
Common Lisp would sound like a miracle language if it wasn't real.

Can be configured to run almost as fast as C. Or dynamism that rivals Ruby and
Python if you don't bother to specify types. An object system (and meta-object
protocol) that rivals Smalltalk in sophistication. Full functional programming
capabilities, and a syntax and libraries that favor that style. An entire sub-
language for iteration that rivals Python's generation/comprehension
facilities. The ability to be procedural when you really need to.
Sophisticated built in data types. A facility for abstraction unrivaled by any
other language that's not a Lisp.

The point is not necessarily that CL is the absolute best for every one of
those points. But you can make a case for CL vs. another language based on
that language's strong points, not its weak points.

Of course, don't get me started on the mess that is CL's community...

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lst
> Of course, don't get me started on the mess that is CL's community...

 _is_ or _was_? It is in fact changing into better.

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jimbokun
Glad to hear it. Maybe I should check back in.

Specific developments I should be aware of...?

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sygzzy
That is a truly horrible file viewer. Allow the user to define how they want
their files. No lock in - whoever did this is evil or a moron.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
The url I submitted is:
<http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier/research/verna.06.imecs.pdf>

Not sure how or why it wound up at scribd.com

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tomjen
Properly because scribd is a YC company and HN does some form of automatic
submit of pdf files.

I which case the problem should be solved relatively fast because somebody
here likely knows the guys at scribd.

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justindz
I can barely read the text. Is it my computer or the document?

~~~
boredguy8
It's scribd.

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randomhack
The article does not say why the Lisp code was faster in the float case. What
bottleneck did GCC face there?

Btw does CL have OpenMP style parallel for loops?

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omouse
Fuck this obsession with performance! Does the language help you develop
better programs? Is the language safer/smaller/some-other-important-metric?

~~~
jrockway
Lisp is really the best of both worlds. It's a nice looking language (easy to
read and write; and good tools available), and I would use it even if it were
slow. But unlike the other slow langauges (Perl), it can be made to run fast.

Now if only there were some libraries.

~~~
jsyedidia
You might want to look at Nu (<http://programming.nu>). It's a new Lisp built
on Objective-C, designed to make it extremely easy to call C or Objective-C
libraries and frameworks (particularly Cocoa). It's a wonderful merger of
Lisp, Objective-C, and Ruby.

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henning
You can't make Common Lisp very fast without making it brittle or introducing
non-standard mechanisms for giving the compiler type information.

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Hexstream
[citation needed]

And there are already standard mechanisms to provide type information to the
compiler...

If you only optimize what you determined are the bottlenecks with the aid of a
profiler, your code will run fast and won't be brittle.

