Programming-Language-Benchmark VS Elm

I found Zig implementation of json parsing is interesting. The code is free from hidden control flow !.

https://github.com/hanabi1224/Programming-Language-Benchmark...

It appears helloworld is the only test with any repeats, and it only has 5 repeats. https://github.com/hanabi1224/Programming-Language-Benchmark...

Here's the measurement code, it appears to be significantly more complicated than a simple fork/exec/wait loop but that could just be all the C# getting in the way: https://github.com/hanabi1224/Programming-Language-Benchmark... Nevertheless you are probably right that the bulk of this 1.8ms is in the executable under test, and it truly is just bloat. Running `hyperfine ./empty-main-function` from rustc on my Mac gives 0.8ms.

Is faster... on code that has been optimized to hell and back 5 times over and no longer resembles anything like normal code written in the language.

Seriously, this is the code for the top program. I'm reasonably sure 99% of C++ programmers could not decipher it without spending significant amounts of time on google: https://github.com/hanabi1224/Programming-Language-Benchmark...

I appreciate that fair benchmarks across languages are a hard problem, but this is not a good solution to it. Any reference to this data as a comparison between "programming languages and compilers" needs to come with a giant disclaimer that it's comparing them at something you almost certainly don't use them for, and is very far from their main use case.

I also appreciate that this is a repetitive comment the likes of which always come up when this benchmark is mentioned... but I really don't see another way to avoid people misinterpreting it. Very few people are going to spontaneously click through to the code.

Elm [1] is based on a similar idea. Build your app from pure functions that return HTML tags.

[1] https://elm-lang.org/

You also wouldn't really be creating your own new programing language. You would be creating something that can run JavaScript by following JavaScript standards and syntax. You might be able to add some non-standard features of your own on top of those standards, or include your own standard library of helpers or utilities, but you can't completely make a new or alternative language and then load it in the browser (or at least not by reimplementing ECMAScript standards... you actually can make your own language that runs within any Javascript enviroment, if you provide an interpreter or compiler that transforms it into valid JS. Some people have done something like this, eg Elm: https://elm-lang.org/).

You should at least have a look at https://elm-lang.org/ it is a pure functional language like Haskell (although with fewer fancy syntax/type classes) but it has some lovely libraries for visualisation and even with plain elm (+ elm-ui) doing string transformations can be easily done.

I get it. However, the whole point of using Unions to narrow your types, ensure only a set of possible scenarios can occur, and only access data of a particular union when it’s safe to do so. That’s some of what pattern matching can provide, and 100% of what using switch statements in TypeScript with their Discriminated Unions can provide. Yes, it’s not 100% exhaustive, but TypeScript is not soundly typed, and even Elm which is still has the same issue TypeScript does: You’re running in JavaScript where anything is possible. So it’s good enough to build with and much better than what you had.

The beauty of a language like Elm (and other lambda-calculus / functional programming inspired languages) is that there's very little transformation involved in going from an idea to code. And that seems to have a big impact on getting things done.

I think the most fun and approachable way for beginners to build games with functional programming is with Elm [1].

See a few (small, demo) games built by the community in [2] .

Notice Elm has abandoned the FRP approach in favor of Model-View-Update [3].

[1] https://elm-lang.org/