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> In my experience language shootouts in general are often terrible by design

My experience is that this is the sort of thing where everyone rags on it, but no one actually attempts to provide something "better".



Because there's always a "for what" in there. An an analogy, consider MMA. On the surface, it seems to answer the question "what's the best martial art?". But really, it only answers the question of what is the best martial art for fighting a single opponent in an octogon shaped ring in front of an audience aiming for a submission? And the answer is of course Brazilian Ju Jitsu, exactly the answer the founders of UFC wanted...

Former cop Rory Miller writes about this in his book, the police experimented with BJJ and found it useless. Why? Because in BJJ you pin your opponent on his back because it makes a better show for the audience, but as a cop you always pin your opponent on his front so you can handcuff him!


Ok, sure, but I'd rather see a rough attempt at getting some numbers than just throwing your hands up in the air and saying "gee, that's a hard problem".

Also, I think that we all know enough about programming and languages and their many uses that we can talk directly about it, rather than about an analogy.


Why does somebody saying "I wouldn't use this." have to provide an alternative? If such a statement is backed by reasons I find it interesting to read. They're saving me trouble trying it out, just like any other review.


Why? Because people want to know how fast languages are, and it's not a stupid question if you are considering it in a wider context.

And they're going to do benchmarks.

So you can either complain that they're not good, or you can try and improve them.


"So you can either complain that they're not good, or you can try and improve them."

Yes, that sentence is literally correct. But it sounds like it's saying one option is not useful. And I still haven't heard a single reason why reviews of benchmarks are bad.

Responding to a criticism with "those who can't do criticize" is super, super boring. It's been done to death. You're just tarring all criticism with an overly broad brush. If it's bad criticism why is it worth responding to? And if it's plausible criticism why aren't you focusing on the actual details?


Bitching about language benchmarks has been done to death too.


Who are you saying is bitching? OP or DarkShikari or me?




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