[Haskell-cafe] Re: Is Haskell a 5GL?

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello Bill,

Tuesday, September 26, 2006, 1:03:02 AM, you wrote:

> I spent some time working on a large Prolog application where
> performance was critical,
...
> I think you're right that Haskell should
> be in the same bag as Prolog.

and Haskell is the same as C++ when performance is critical, while C++
is the same as assembler. believe me - i has experience of optimizing
both Haskell and C++ programs :)

i think it's wrong to make decisions about language expressiveness on
the base of requirements for writing optimized programs. my _application_
Haskell/C++ code contains about 80-90%% of code that _don't need_ to
be optimized and it's just the case when higher language expressiveness
rules. but for the remaining 10-20%% optimizing of higher-level
language becomes a nightmare and it is much better to use lower-level
language in these places (if it's possible!) instead of using lower-level
techniques that just don't fit in the higher-language toolbox :(

ps: btw, i was really thinking in assembler when optimizing my Haskell lib.
it is why it so fast. on good-old DEC cpus whole getChar/putChar
actions may be compiled in just one asm instruction :)  so, using
your logic, Haskell is 1-gl language :)

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com