Michael S (already5chosen@yahoo.com) on 3/5/08 wrote:
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>Patrik Hägglund (patrik.hagglund@bredband.net) on 3/5/08 wrote:
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>>
>>Today, OCaml may even be close to 100%, due to compiler improvements. But for me,
>>close is not enough ;).
>>
>>
>
>The question is - whether 100% of 'C' speed is achievable in the languages that
>you mentioned above as examples of good efficiency, i.e. Ada and Modula-3.
>I don't know Modula-3 but in Ada there are cases in which I don't see how compiler
>will avoid significant run-time overhead.

Although it is possible to significantly reduce the overhead of runtime checks, you can't in all cases indeed. That's why you still need low level features such as using unchecked arrays and C-style pointers.

But I agree with Patrik, a high-level language that is both easier to use and faster than C/C++ would be great.

An important aspect most languages neglect is making it easy to produce good quality compilers. That includes things like making it feasible to write a parser (think C++) and enable compilers to produce good quality code without having to resort to herioc optimizations. High level features often have a detrimental effect on codequality, so you need to decide whether the benefit is worth the cost.

Wilco