Subject: Re: How fast can lisp go? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/07/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3172431287769739@naggum.net> * Martin Cracauer | Well, if it's real-time, you may get into conflict with the Garbage | Collector. This is a persistent myth. Real time does not mean zero latency. With stream data, non-zero latency translates to buffering. You don't want to saturate the processor, anyway, so you have time to catch up after a GC. | There are no "real" problems with Common Lisp reaching what I'd call | "raw machine speed". Minor problems are that the declarations in | Lisp are ugly and hard to write, so that you loose some of Lisp's | advantage. So use Common Lisp to its advantage and write macros to help with the type declarations, then. | Using objects from classes in the classical sense in Lisp (CLOS) is | a lot slower than C++ or Objective-C, but for raw speed you don't | want that anyway. Another persistent myth. Properly declared, CLOS is not at a disadvantage compared to C++, which does a lot of unnecessary copying due to its lack of garbage collection. It takes more time than C++ aficionados are willing to admit. If CMUCL still uses PCL, it should be noted that a native CLOS is much, much more efficient than PCL. #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.