[Haskell] Re: Comments from Brent Fulgham on Haskell and the shootout

[Simon Marlow]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> Tuesday, June 27, 2006, 1:44:45 PM, you wrote:
> 
>>I wanted to write to inform you how shocked I was to see the great
>>advances in performance in the Glorious Haskell Compiler over the  
>>last year or so.  Of course, we have also benefited from some great  
>>contributions by the folks on the Haskell-Cafe mailing list.
> 
> it's nice to read but completely false, you know. GHC don't improved
> it's speed over last year, 6.4.2 differs from 6.4 only in reliability
> areas
> 
> source of this great progress is really work of Haskell fans,
> especially Donald Bruce Stewart. moreover, i quickly scanned the tests
> where GHC still far behind it's competition and in most cases speed is
> determined by libraries.

This is the great thing.  Not only are we already doing quite well, but 
we know there are substantial improvements still to be had.

> .. (and jhc already generates native C code, so it will have at least
 > one substantial advantage over GHC) ...

Compiling via C is a dead end.  We realised this about 5 years ago, and 
yet we still haven't managed to shake off the C backend from GHC, but I 
remain hopeful that one day we will.  /me heads for the cafe...

Cheers,
	Simon