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=0.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,71aa8acfc8368f1c X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) Subject: Re: BLAS Date: 2000/05/15 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 623402033 References: <391F18DF.C4699276@maths.unine.ch> X-Trace: news.decus.org 958345346 22386 KILGALLEN [216.44.122.34] Organization: LJK Software Reply-To: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-05-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <391F18DF.C4699276@maths.unine.ch>, Gautier writes: > Larry Kilgallen: >> I realize that performance is one aspect of "quality", >> but I think the more important one is "correctness". > > Do I understand well ?! You seem to oppose quality and correctness. > As a DEC Ada user, you have the example of a product where > quality and correctness meet rather well, don't they ?... I view performance and correctness as being two aspects of quality, and while the degree to which they are both present in any compiler may be due to the same efforts, it is not at all guaranteed. However well DEC Ada performs on Alpha is due at least partially to peephole optimization on the GEM common back end, which was done by an entirely different group of people than those who did the Ada 83 parsing. >> I don't like the idea of Ada people being sucked into the >> mainstream error of considering only that which is most >> easily measured rather than that which is most important. > > You seem to fear a comparison on performance. But some Ada > compilers _do_ produce performant code! Those which don't should > be improved! Ada is known to have nice, unique features around typing > and security, but people often say: "ok, nice, but it means > slower code doesn't it ?" If you can say: "The wonderful Ada > has such, such and such marvelous features _AND_ this compiler > and that one produce code so fast that you need a bigger fan > for the CPU", where is the problem ?... I don't disagree with the idea of comparing on performance or features, I disagree with the idea of leaving correctness out of the comparison. Correctness is more difficult to deal with since (at least for Ada) compilers will pass the tests but will have defects beyond the scope of the tests.