A Faster Language? (Was Re: Prolog is "faster" than C)

[m100-2ai at WEB.berkeley.edu]

Hello world.

There have been a lot of talks lately on the net about PROLOG being
faster than C (and a lot of counter-arguments as well).  However, the
basic question which troubles me is that of comparing the speed of
2 programming languages.  Is it really "correct" to say that one
programming language is faster than the other?  Doesn't that really
depend on the compiler, but not the language itself?

I don't know because I am no expert in the field of programming languages
(even though I know half a dozen of different programming languages).  Would
the real experts please give us their opinions on comparing speed of
2 languages?

On a related note.... Even if language A is "faster" than language B by a
minute factor (if the concept of a faster language makes sense), doesn't it
seem unreasonable to pedantically insisting on using A if much less
development time is needed if B is used (for example, B can be OOPL).

An example of this is virtual functions in the C++ language.  It takes
longer to invoke a virtual function than a regular function because of
the time required by the selector to resolve dynamic binding.  However, we
still prefer virtual functions over regular functions because they make
the code extendible in the future.

  __         ___      ___   _/'     Conrad Wong  (cwong at cory.berkeley.edu)
 /  \     __/   \----'   \-' c`-o
|    |   /  > __/_   / __/_`,  _|     Imitation is the sincerest form of
     \__/   \_____\`--\____\ ;/'       lack of imagination -- Ghondahrl