Path: csiph.com!aioe.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Rod Pemberton Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Re: Ruby/Forth challenge for WJ Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 05:17:55 -0500 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Lines: 39 Message-ID: <20160113051755.10f38de7@_> References: <35f4686c-f2c4-4ed8-9c46-2238645b9b97@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: n4wpt9zq8xR26Ttf9mo2BA.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-Newsreader: Claws Mail 3.13.1 (GTK+ 2.24.10; x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu) X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.8.2 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.forth:44818 On Wed, 13 Jan 2016 07:58:49 -0000 (UTC) "WJ" wrote: > Chris Curl wrote: > > [Chris' challenge] > > > > Any bets on which will be faster? > > Speed isn't everything. As a general rule, high-level languages are > slower than low-level languages. If speed of execution were the only > thing that mattered, then all programming would be done in assembly > language, Fortran, or C. So, you've excluded C from being a high-level language? ... You've also included *all* interpreters in the high-level language group, i.e., simply because they're slower than assembly. (Clearly, I don't know what to say to that.) > [teaching examples] What purpose do those serve other than as programming examples to fill a textbook? I.e., none of them seem to be real-world problems that anyone would ever need to solve. Most seem to be the same types of problems that were taught for Pascal programming to teach programming, not to teach problem solving. I take it that you posted those examples in order to prove that the ability to solve a problem quickly is more important than speed. This is only true only for a non-computer programming situations, i.e., for solving homework or engineering problems. If you're coding applications or an operating system, which I'm assuming is still the job of most computer programmers, then speed is far more important. Rod Pemberton