Re: Language Efficiency

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <3lrrqk$kbj@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, bb206@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Harold P Zbiegien) writes:
> 
> In a previous article, robertb@cbis.com (Robert C. Bethel) says:
> 
>>Anyone know of research papers that deal with the subject
>>of language efficiency? By efficiency I mean the quality
>>of machine binaries (code space, execution time, etc.)
>>given an identical program coded in several languages.
>>
>>Thanks 
>>--
>>Robert.Bethel@CBIS.Com 
>>
> Shouldn't this be labeled "compiler efficiency"  There may not be anything
> inherent between the efficiency of one language and another, but there sure
> is differences between the generated code coming out of compilers.
> 
> Harold
> American Greetings Corp.

Although efficiency of compilers is the controlling issue for most
environments (due to the low state of optimization for most widely
used compilers), language efficiency is a separate issue which would
be of interest if compilers were not masking the effects.

One opinion is that "higher level" languages with strong type checking
give the compiler a better chance to understand what the programmer
really intended and optimize accordingly.

Of course this also depends on the programmer having coded what was
really intended.

Finally, let me note that the two specific examples given by Robert,
"code space" and "execution time" are often at odds with each other,
so a robust compiler will let the user indicate a preference.

Larry Kilgallen