Mathematica 7 compares to other languages

Xah Lee xahlee at gmail.com
Mon Dec 8 18:14:18 EST 2008


Dear George Neuner,

Xah Lee wrote:
> >The phenomenon of creating code that are inefficient is proportional
> >to the highlevelness or power of the lang. In general, the higher
> >level of the lang, the less possible it is actually to produce a code
> >that is as efficient as a lower level lang.

George Neuner wrote:
> This depends on whether someone has taken the time to create a high
> quality optimizing compiler.

try to read the sentence. I quote:
«The phenomenon of creating code that are inefficient is proportional
to the highlevelness or power of the lang. In general, the higher
level of the lang, the less possible it is actually to produce a code
that is as efficient as a lower level lang.»

Xah Lee wrote:
> >For example,
> >the level or power of lang can be roughly order as
> >this:
>
> >assembly langs
> >C, pascal
> >C++, java, c#
> >unix shells
> >perl, python, ruby, php
> >lisp
> >Mathematica

George wrote:
> According to what "power" estimation?  Assembly, C/C++, C#, Pascal,
> Java, Python, Ruby and Lisp are all Turing Complete.  I don't know
> offhand whether Mathematica is also TC, but if it is then it is at
> most equally powerful.

it's amazing that every tech geekers (aka idiots) want to quote
“Turing Complete” in every chance. Even a simple cellular automata,
such as Conway's game of life or rule 110, are complete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110

in fact, according to Stephen Wolfram's controversial thesis by the
name of “Principle of computational equivalence”, every goddamn thing
in nature is just about turing complete. (just imagine, when you take
a piss, the stream of yellow fluid is actually doing turning complete
computations!)

for a change, it'd be far more interesting and effective knowledge
showoff to cite langs that are not so-called fuck of the turing
complete.

the rest of you message went on stupidly on the turing complete point
of view on language's power, mixed with lisp fanaticism, and personal
gribes about merits and applicability assembly vs higher level langs.
It's fine to go on with your gribes, but be careful in using me as a
stepping stone.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/


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