On: In Praise of APL: A Language for Lyrical Programmi...

[geocar]

> However, afaict languages following APL's suit specialize in math, so I wonder if the approach could be adapted to more general kind of coding.

I use k/q regularly, and I'm not using it for "math".

The compact notation creates value in helping you make correct programs. See [1] and [2] specifically.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476294

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8476702

You can write C in a dense style as well. And I do. When I do this, I can see opportunities for reuse that I cannot see if I spread my C program across multiple pages and multiple files. Here is the bulk of my webserver[3] that will beat the pants off of any other webserver -- substantially faster than nodejs or kdb's own webserver[4], and probably nginx or anything else you've got. (PS: If you think you know of a faster one, I'd like to know about it).

I am telling you I can only do this because the code is small.

[3]: https://github.com/geocar/dash/blob/master/d.c#L63

[4]: https://github.com/geocar/dash#performance

[aasasd → geocar]

Node.js is not the thing to compare C web servers performance to. Like, it's so much not the thing, it goes beyond funny and wraps around to sad.

Let me refer you to the TechEmpower framework benchmarks: https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r17&hw=...

Look at the language column there, you'll be surprised.

[geocar → aasasd]

Here's fasthttp running on my machine (best of three):

    $ wrk -t2 -c90 -d9s http://localhost:8080/plaintext
    Running 9s test @ http://localhost:8080/plaintext
      2 threads and 90 connections
      Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
        Latency   831.78us  364.48us   7.56ms   70.19%
        Req/Sec    40.55k     3.31k   48.04k    74.44%
      726417 requests in 9.01s, 87.98MB read
    Requests/sec:  80603.64
    Transfer/sec:      9.76MB

which I got by checking out https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks.git, disabling the mysql connection, and running frameworks/Go/fasthttp's ./server-mysql (which is what the benchmark script seems to do). I thought this would be easier than getting dash running the TechEmpower results.

and here's dash running with the kdb networking disabled (best of three):

    $ wrk -t2 -c90 -d3s 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/?f=204&k=hi&v=1'
    Running 3s test @ http://127.0.0.1:8080/?f=204&k=hi&v=1
      2 threads and 90 connections
      Thread Stats   Avg      Stdev     Max   +/- Stdev
        Latency   787.72us  213.62us   3.49ms   71.85%
        Req/Sec    44.82k     3.04k   60.44k    83.61%
      271946 requests in 3.10s, 16.08MB read
    Requests/sec:  87671.23
    Transfer/sec:      5.18MB

My laptop isn't a beefy "Dell R440 Xeon Gold + 10 GbE" -- this is just a loopback test, but it's already disinclined me to spend any more time on it; Fasthttp definitely is impressive how close it gets, but dash is still faster.

And comparing a 100 line C program to hundreds or thousands of lines of go or C or Java is a bit pointless. If the 100 lines of C doesn't do what you want, I'll throw it away and write a different 100 lines. That's what brief programs get you.

NB: I would have tried ulib but it wouldn't even build on my laptop.

[mycall → geocar]

If you rewrote [3] to use cleaner variable naming, perhaps the readability would improve?