[erlang-questions] trading systems

Jayson Vantuyl kagato@REDACTED
Thu Oct 1 22:26:22 CEST 2009


> I'm assuming it's an Erlang-specific suggestion, right? http://www.kx.com 
>  flies with 64 bits, Mozilla's TraceMonkey Javascript engine is up  
> to 20% faster with 64 bits on some benchmarks. There are more  
> registers available for the compiler to use, etc. In short, I  
> disagree since your suggestion is quite general and is not backed up  
> by known use cases.
Actually, it's only mildly supported by Erlang, but heavily supported  
in Python and Ruby.  Unless you're generating machine code, I've never  
seen 64-bit to be a big boost.  While HIPE might make that a non- 
issue, I've generally observed that VMs don't benefit from 64-bit in  
that way.

> I assume you have not used Haskell for heavy-duty projects but heard  
> of it and maybe tinkered with it. I used Haskell for a networking  
> project I extensively wrote about (google for Erlang vs Haskell). I  
> switched to Erlang in the end and felt much better. Haskell is lazy  
> which makes performance unpredictable.
I've used it and loathed that lack of libraries.  I was only pointing  
out that it's type system is cleaner.  Just trying to round out the  
spectrum of options.

> Why? I interviewed with a hedge fund. They use templates extensively  
> and it makes sense. Partial template specialization is just the  
> ticket to optimize generic code at compile time.
Templates can drastically inflate code size and cause an extra  
indirection at function call time.  I've always found that, for  
optimization, templates are middling, doing your own indirection in  
straight C is king--especially when you give branching hints.  Of  
course, that might be premature optimization at this point.  ;P

> Yes, thanks. I've been using tracing for years now.
I'll assume from your OpenPoker statement that you were doing tracing  
with Erlang.  I've found the documentation a bit lacking, so I like to  
throw that example around to make sure that people can actually figure  
out how to use it.  Let's just say that dbg:tpl is not exactly an  
obvious interface.

> And faster time to market.
Right on.

-- 
Jayson Vantuyl
kagato@REDACTED







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