Look and think good things about D

[Chris]

On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 12:47:21 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> Ary Borenszweig:
>
>> Here's what I was able to do in some minutes:
>>
>> ---
>> if ARGV.length != 1
>>  puts "missing argument: n"
>>  exit 1
>> end
>>
>> n = ARGV[0].to_i
>> str = "1"
>> buffer = String::Buffer.new(20)
>> n.times do
>>  puts str.length
>>  str.each_chunk do |digit, count|
>>    buffer << '0' + count
>>    buffer << digit
>>  end
>>  str = buffer.to_s
>>  buffer.clear
>> end
>>
>> With n=70 it takes about 4.89s. With n=45 it takes about 
>> 0.012s.
>
> This program is much longer in number of tokens to the first D 
> program. You can write a D program about as fast as this in 
> about the same number of tokens.
>
> Perhaps I should add an intermediate third version that shows 
> code that's not as extreme as the two versions there. Thank you 
> for the implicit suggestion.
>
>
>> And with Crystal you could do the second version as well, 
>> because you have access to low level stuff like pointers.
>
> In Crystal do you have final switches, gotos, etc too?
>
>
>> And also, the language is pretty new so there's still
>> a lot of optimizations to be done.
>
> And LDC2 will improve in the meantime.
>
>
>> I also thought ranges were pretty fast because of their nature.
>
> It also matters a lot how you use them, this is normal in 
> computer programming.
>
>
>> Why are they slow in this example?
>
> Just because the first example is not written for speed, I 
> didn't even add run-time timings for it at first. And it's not 
> that slow.
>
> Bye,
> bearophile

Slightly OT: Why do languages like Ruby (and now Crystal) have to 
state the obvious in an awkward way?

(2...max).each do

Of course you _do_ _each one_ from 2 to max. Is it to make it 
more "human"? If anything, human languages and thinking get rid 
of the superfluous (i.e. the obvious). Just like

x = x + 1 (Pythronizing)
x++; (obvious, concise, all you need).

Buy one, get one free.

(= If you buy one (of these), you will get one (another one of 
these) for free.)

Sorry that was just a rant-om comment :)