[Factor-talk] benchmark comparing Factor to ANS-Forth

[Hugh A. <hug...@ya...>]

If a comparison in speed is to be made, we need somebody who cares about Factor to write the Factor code.
I think Factor is faster than other dynamic-OOP languages (R, Python, Ruby, etc.). Realistically however, no dynamic-OOP language is very fast. Having tagged data and garbage-collection is just inherently slow. 
Dynamic-OOP languages are primarily useful in regard to the code-libraries available. R or Python may be very slow, but they do have a lot of code-libraries available, especially for displaying data. I could write my programs that require speed in Forth and have them dump the raw data into a file, then use one of these languages to display the data graphically. Right now I display the data in the LowDraw.4th program, but it is just a text table --- this doesn't look very professional.
I mostly posted this challenge to find out if Factor is faster than SwiftForth. I don't think Factor is going to be anywhere near VFX for speed. SwiftForth is very inefficient though --- it would be somewhat amusing if a dynamic-OOP language generated faster code than SwiftForth.
Anyway --- benchmark challenges like this aren't very interesting, especially when the result is a foregone conclusion --- I just posted it because I was curious.
regards --- Hugh





   
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 15:36:57 -0800
From: John Benediktsson <mr...@gm...>
Subject: Re: [Factor-talk] benchmark comparing Factor to ANS-Forth
To: Hugh Aguilar <hug...@ya...>,
    "fac...@li..."
    <fac...@li...>
Message-ID:
    <CAK...@ma...>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi Hugh,

Are you planning on implementing your program in Factor for comparison?

You can look over our statistics libraries here:

    http://docs.factorcode.org/content/vocab-math.statistics.html

Best,
John.

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Hugh Aguilar <hug...@ya...>
wrote:

> My first-ever ANS-Forth program was LowDraw.4th that was written about
> 12-15 years ago. It is now one of my example programs in the novice
> package: http://www.forth.org/novice.html This program does a
> recursive-traversal of all the possible hands in LowDraw  poker given
> various drawing strategies and calculates the probabilities.
>
> The subject of bench-marking has been discussed a few times on
> comp.lang.forth and I have suggested that my program would make a good
> benchmark. Most benchmarks involve doing the same simple calculation
> repeatedly inside of a loop and/or testing what code-library functions are
> available, which provides almost no information about the language speed.
> My program is non-trivial at the level of a real-world program, but is yet
> simple enough that most programmers should be able to implement it in their
> favorite language over a weekend (note: today is Friday).
>
> I think that Factor has a good chance of beating SwiftForth, but is
> unlikely to come close to VFX (there are free evaluation versions of both
> available for download). I would be interested in seeing how Factor
> compares. I would also be interested in seeing how Oforth compares (is
> Oforth discussed on this forum at all?).
>
> I'm learning R right now, and intend to port my program over to R to
> benchmark R's speed (I'm not expecting R to be very fast). The advantage of
> R seems to be a lot of code-libraries for statistics, and convenient
> representation of arrays of numbers. Factor's sequences should be equally
> convenient --- how does Factor compare in regard to code-libraries for
> statistics? --- I'm trying to learn statistics these days, which is a
> subject I have always wanted to know more about.
>
> I still have my STUNDURD.TXT design of a micro-controller that supports
> quotations at the machine-language level --- right now you have to have me
> email it to you if you are interested, because thewww.forth.org website
> is stuck (the guy who maintains it had a stroke) --- afaik, Stundurd Forth
> is an appropriate topic for this forum, as is any Forth-derived language
> that supports quotations.
>
> regards --- Hugh