On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Robert Cummings <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 14:17 -0400, Nathan Nobbe wrote: > > On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 6:50 AM, Per Jessen <per@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > Nathan Nobbe wrote: > > > > > > > umm, so whats going on here is the implicit component of the > statement > > > > that incorporates relative or absolute performance. in terms of > > > > relative performance the statement is accurate; in terms of absolute > > > > performance, its quite inaccurate. > > > > > > > > > > Nathan, I think we're disagreeing about the meaning of "algorithm" - > an > > > algorithm does not have an absolute performance until it's been > > > implemented - in some of other language and machine. > > > > > > > i thought about that too.. i looked it up on wikipedia before i posted > just > > to be sure of myself. the way i view it, there are 2 things an > algorithm > > could mean. there are for instance well known algorithms like bubble > sort > > or quick sort, but basically any function written in any language is an > > algorithm. and wikipedia agrees w/ that statement. > > "Algorithm" is just a fancy word for recipe. In fact, you should ask a > someone sometime what algorithm they're using to bake a cake ;) great, so you agree, and my previous posts are right. > > (according to you) in c or php then at that point it will have an > absolute > > performance. and the likelihood its faster in c, absolutely, is very > very > > high :) > > > but either way i dont see why it matters, if you implement an algorithm > > If something written in C is slower than something in PHP, or slower > even than something written in C++, then it's a problem with the > implementation, not the language. The best C++ can do is match the speed > of C. C++ has overhead, that overhead can't be squashed to be more > efficient than C, it can only be removed when not necessary. Unless of > course, for some odd, odd, odd reason, an optimization for C++ compiled > code was not also added to C. Since any optimization that can make C++ > faster can also make C faster where appropriate. The same is true of > memory consumption in C++ versus C. > ya; conceptually c should always be faster than c++, for the same reason c should be faster than php. i think the compiler optimizations is why c++ is currently listed as 'faster' on the great computer language shootout, but i havent looked at the tests. -nathan
