Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Aug 8, 2006, at 10:04 AM, Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > On 8/8/06, Isaac Gouy <igouy / yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Austin, I knew I could rely on you!
> >
> > Certainly I'll post in response as long as you're going to shill
> > something as worthless as the shootout.
> >
> > I'm not surprised when Ruby shows up relatively fast; the choice of
> > algorithm almost always beats out the choice of language.
> >
> > I'm just surprised it took you so long in the thread to start pushing
> > the shootout so hard. You're usually not so restrained before your
> > shilling starts.
>
> I have to agree with Austin here.  There are benchmarks inside that
> specify "this benchmark must use the implementation of the random
> number generator from benchmark X".
>
> Requirements like that make the results even more bogus.  Sure, Ruby
> has slower method dispatch, but now you've got and made the benchmark
> unrealistic by skipping over the core libraries of all your
> benchmarked applications.
>
> --
> Eric Hodel - drbrain / segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net
> This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant
>
> http://trackmap.robotcoop.com

Thank you for making a specific criticism.

1) iirc We use a random number generator in one benchmark - fasta
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/benchmark.php?test=fasta&lang=all

2) It's very straightforward - if we use Ruby rand instead of
implementing that random number generator we won't get the correct
output.

3) My impression is you feel arbitrary requirements are unrealistic - I
actually worked with a user who required a specific random number
generator, which unfortunately wasn't provided by the language
libraries I had available. In my experience arbitrary requirements are
boringly realistic.

(I wonder what we mean by "unrealistic" in this context? Do we mean
"Not like the programs I work on"?)