are-we-fast-yet VS normandy

> Sure there's a small overhead to smart pointers

Not so small, and it has the potential to significantly speed down an application when not used wisely. Here are e.g. some measurements where the programmer used C++11 and did everything with smart pointers: https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet/issues/80#issuecomm.... There was a speed down between factor 2 and 10 compared with the C++98 implementation. Also remember that smart pointers create memory leaks when used with circular references, and there is an additional memory allocation involved with each smart pointer.

> Garbage collection has an overhead too of course

The Boehm GC is surprisingly efficient. See e.g. these measurements: https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/blob/master/testcase.... The same benchmark suite as above is compared with different versions of Mono (using the generational GC) and the C code (using Boehm GC) generated with my Oberon compiler. The latter only is 20% slower than the native C++98 version, and still twice as fast as Mono 5.

See https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet/blob/master/docs/guidelines.md.

That's a very interesting article, thanks. Interesting to note that Cython is only about twice as fast as Python 3.10 and only about 40% faster than Python 3.11.

The official Python site advertises a speedup of 25% from 3.10 to 3.11; in the article a speedup of 60% was measured. It therefore usually makes sense to measure different algorithms. Unfortunately there is no Python or C++ implementation yet for https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet.

> Software benchmarks are super subjective.

No, they are not, but they are just a measurement tool, not a source of absolute thruth. When I studied engineering at ETH we learned "Who measures measures rubbish!" ("Wer misst misst Mist!" in German). Every measurement has errors and being aware of these errors and coping with it is part of the engineering profession. The problem with programming language benchmarks is often that the goal is to win by all means; to compare as fairly and objectively as possible instead, there must be a set of suitable rules adhered to by all benchmark implementations. Such a set of rules is e.g. given for the Are-we-fast-yet suite (https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet).

I am aware of the various published test results where CoreCLR shows fantastic speed-ups compared to Mono, e.g. when calculating MD5 or SHA hash sums.

But my measurements based on the Are-we-fast-yet benchmark suite (see https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet and https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/tree/master/testcases/Are-we-fast-yet) show a completely different picture. Here the difference between Mono and CoreCLR (both versions 3 and 5) is within +/- 10%, so nothing earth shattering.

Here are my measurement results:

https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/blob/master/testcases/Are-we-fast-yet/Are-we-fast-yet_results_linux.pdf comparing the same benchmark on the same machine run under LuaJIT, Mono, Node.js and Crystal.

https://github.com/rochus-keller/Oberon/blob/master/testcases/Are-we-fast-yet/Are-we-fast-yet_results_windows.pdf comparing Mono, .Net 4 and CoreCLR 3 and 5 on the same machine.

Here are the assemblies of the Are-we-fast-yet benchmark suite used for the measurements, in case you want to reproduce my results: http://software.rochus-keller.ch/Are-we-fast-yet_CLI_2021-08-28.zip.

I was very surprised by the results. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I measured on x86, or that the benchmark suite used includes somewhat larger (i.e. more representative) applications than just micro benchmarks.

What are your opinions? Do others have similar results?

There is a good reason for this; have a look at e.g. https://github.com/smarr/are-we-fast-yet/blob/master/docs/guidelines.md.

Then apparently the SOM nbody program is taken as the basis of a new Java nbody program.

Some years ago I was on a shitty job - not technically, but the company turned out to be inhumane - at a Ruby shop, and on the side I was toying with mini_racer and I just upgraded to some macOS beta where it failed to build. A shitty +1-1 hack† for a compiler flag later and it was back flying.

A month later I received a cold email from a CTO to chat a bit about that PR, turns out they were using mini_racer heavily and forked it for their own purpose, and also created PyMiniRacer for the Python side of things. Next thing I know I got hired. Two years later the company got acquired.

Of course conditionally adding a compiler flag wasn't what got me hired per se, it only got my profile noticed. Probably side projects such as porting go by example to Ruby by implementing a ~1:1 CSP channel API[1], an Electron desktop client for Mattermost basically on a dare[2], ex mode for the Atom editor so that I could have that frackin' `:w`[3], leveraging Blocks to bolt on object-oriented-ness onto C because "closures are a poor man's object"[4], or reverse-engineering the Xbox One USB gamepad and writing a kext to turn it into a HID device on macOS from scratch on a lonely 7+h train ride with passengers judgementally staring at me sideways[4] probably contributed to it a bit.

My takeaway: luck is when preparation meets opportunity; but don't to side projects to get hired, because if you don't get hired then that time is lost. Rather, of all things, scratch your itch, have fun, embrace whatever quirkiness you fancy; no one can take that away from you.

[0]: https://github.com/rubyjs/mini_racer/commit/2086db1bbf2b5de4...

[1]: https://github.com/lloeki/normandy

[2]: https://github.com/lloeki/matterfront

[3]: https://github.com/lloeki/ex-mode

[4]: https://github.com/lloeki/cblocks-clobj/blob/master/main.c

[5]: https://github.com/lloeki/xbox_one_controller

Do learn Ruby. You seem to answer your own question! You’re curious about it, worst case you’ll have opened your mind to something else which is only a good thing.

But do not be fooled by Rails, Ruby is quite something else, of which Rails is a very small, opinionated part.

Tips: look at MiniTest source code, Sinatra and Rack source code are quite interesting too.

Shameless plug, a couple of idiomatic Ruby repos of mine:

https://github.com/lloeki/normandy

https://github.com/lloeki/rebel