how to interpret these results ?

[Mats Cronqvist]

Only OpenSource wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Here is a comparison of Erlang and C
> http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=hipe&lang2=gcc 
> What is the recommended approach towards understanding the benchmark numbers ?


   i think comparing to C is pretty worthless, since they are so different.
   when comparing erlang to python or java, one notices a few things;

   erlang is strong in concurrency
   erlang is not great for problems involving number crunching and mutable arrays
   erlang is bad when you have to use regexps
   erlang is REALLY bad at using stdin/stdout

   an observation;
   the benchmarks basically measure how fast really well-written code executes. 
so C is inherently ~10 times faster than erlang. otoh, my personal experience is 
that for a distributed, highly concurrent, million lines of code type project, 
erlang will beat C in speed (it will of course beat C in reliability, 
development cost and time-to-market as well).
   i believe this means that it is much easier to get close to the theoretical 
maximum execution speed in erlang than in C.

   mats