[E-Lang] empirical and statistical comparison of languages

[Karp, Alan]

MarkM wrote:
> 
> >It is an interesting observation that despite the existence
> >of hash table implementations in both the Java and
> >the C++ class libraries none of the non-script programmers
> >used them (but rather implemented a tree solution by hand),
> >whereas for the script programmers the hash tables built
> >into the language were the obvious choice.
> >that need to handle fair amounts of computation and
> >data. Their relative run time and memory consumption
> >overhead will often be acceptable and they may
> >offer significant advantages with respect to programmer
> >productivity - at least for small programs like the
> 
> A very interesting observation.  Unfortunately, in a quick 
> skim, I didn't 
> see that he anywhere speculated on why.  Certainly if I were 
> programming in 
> Java, I expect I would have used the existing collection 
> class library, and 
> I find it strange that these Java programmers didn't.  OTOH, 
> in C++ I would 
> have written my own collection classes before touching the STL.
> 

Perl programs often run faster than their C counterparts, largely because
the Perl hash functions are so effective.  Perhaps that's the reason for the
different behavior.  I know for a fact that the Java 1.6 hash tables were
not particularly good. 

_________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Decision Technology Department
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories MS 1U-2
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