Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?

From: Michael Hicks (mwh@dsl.cis.upenn.edu)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2000 - 20:30:48 MET DST

  • Next message: Max Skaller: "Re: When functional languages can be accepted by industry?"

    > I believe that the Stalin compiler for Scheme, which is a whole program
    > compiler (you give up separate compilation) has done better than C on some
    > much more significant programs than fibonacci. I suspect that any compiler
    > which abandons separate compilation and does aggressive whole program
    > analysis may have problems with extremely large programs, but I don't have
    > evidence to back this up.
    >
    > I presume that a similar compiler for an ML variant could be written. Given
    > that the Caml team has limited resources, I'd rather they spend them
    > elsewhere, as I am satisfied with the performance of OCaml for the problems
    > I apply it to. I realize that others have different priorities.

    In fact, researchers at NECI have developed a whole-program Standard ML
    compiler, called MLton. You can read about it at

    http://external.nj.nec.com/PLS/MLton/

    In general, its programs run 2-3x faster than SML/NJ, but occasionally they
    are a bit slower.

    Mike

    -- 
    Michael Hicks
    Ph.D. Candidate, the University of Pennsylvania
    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mwh            mailto://mwh@dsl.cis.upenn.edu
    "Every time someone asks me to do something, I ask if they want French
     fries with that." -- testimonial of a former McDonald's employee
    



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