From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 10d15b,97482af7429a6a62 X-Google-Attributes: gid10d15b,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97482af7429a6a62 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,97482af7429a6a62 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: mg@harp.camb.inmet.com (Mitch Gart) Subject: Re: Language Efficiency Date: 1995/04/05 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100937563 sender: news@inmet.camb.inmet.com (USENET news) x-nntp-posting-host: harp.camb.inmet.com references: <3lmt64$stt@dplanet.p2k.cbis.com> followup-to: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.cobol organization: Intermetrics, Inc. newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.cobol Date: 1995-04-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert C. Bethel (robertb@cbis.com) wrote: : 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. About 10 years ago I wrote an article on "Benchmarking Ada, C, and Pascal". I translated a set of small programs called the Hennessy Benchmarks from Pascal to Ada and C, and then compared the execution time efficiency of the programs when compiled and run on a PC. The results looked good for Ada: a few programs were a little faster in Ada, a few others were a little faster in C, but overall there were no large differences that made one language look more or less efficient than the others. I could dig out the paper if anyone wants to see it. But as other people posting responses to this question have noted, comparisons like this compare compilers as much as languages. My paper compared Alsys Ada to Lattice C and Turbo Pascal on an old 16-bit Intel 286 PC-AT machine. At the time the PC-AT was the most advanced PC, and Lattice C was one of the best C compilers for the PC. Technology has changed a lot since then. In particular, I think C compiler vendors have made dramatic improvements in their optimizers in the last ten years. Mitch Gart