[gambit-list] Post: Compare the productivity of computer languages

Jussi Piitulainen jpiitula at ling.helsinki.fi
Thu Oct 17 10:12:31 EDT 2013


Uh oh. I created somewhat extensive SQLite3 bindings for Gambit for my
own use many months ago - I rewrote a Java program of mine in Gambit -
but the process of making them available to others got stalled back
then. I have been doing other, completely unrelated things, meaning to
return to that program some day...

Now my bindings would also need testing with the newer Gambit version.

Marc asked me if it was thread-safe. I replied that I don't know. I
still don't know.

It'll be a week before I can even think of opening that project.

Junia Magellan <junnia at gmail.com> writes:

> Dear list members,
> 
> I am the main investigator of a group that is carrying out an
> experiment, which  compares the productivity of computer languages.
> For instance, one may wish to see if a Python programmer is more
> productive than a Scheme programmer with the same ability.
> 
> Here is the spoiler: The volunteers associated with the project were
> not able to run sqlite3 from Gambit. It seems that the bindings are
> old, or not well documented. I would appreciate a link to bindings
> that work out of the box, is the case of both Bigloo and Racket.
> 
> We therefore need to put in place a measurement theory that provides
> for the programmer's ability. In this case one can be sure of an equal
> ability to that of a Scheme programmer. [The research group is
> working with the following languages: C, Java, C#, Common Lisp SBCL)
> and Scheme (Racket and Bigloo).]
> 
> To measure a programmer's ability, the group uses the Rasch model.
> The same model is also used for measuring the ability of a computer
> language to increase a programmer's productivity.
> 
> For the time being, the group is working with the above cited
> languages.  If the reader is unfamiliar with measurement theory, she
> is invited to visit my page concerning the subject:
> strues.org/languages
> 
> Although the page contains original ideas from members of the my
> research group, it should be noted that there are however mathematical
> patches borrowed from other researchers, such as Rasch. This lack of
> originality is in itself not a problem as the page has been
> constructed purely as an  internal report. Of course, in the final
> paper, due credit will be given through appropriate citations.
> 
> To everybody's surprise, Python has not shown itself as being the most
> productive language, while Scheme has, followed closely by sbcl.
> Python occupies a distant third place.
> 
> The volunteers are using Racket and Bigloo to program in Scheme. The
> fact is that everybody found Gambit difficult to use to solve the kind
> of problems associated with the measurement items. Therefore, nobody
> is using Gambit.
> 
> The first difficulty with Gambit is that it does not run out of the
> box in all hosting services. A member of the group tried to fix the
> issue by  consulting this list, but was not successful. Finally, the
> problem was solved after consulting Manuel Serrano and a member of the
> Racket user list.
> So a volunteer has installed a simple Gambit powered page on Hostgator.
> We would like thank Manuel Serrano and André for helping us with this task.
> 
> The other difficult concerns connections to an sql server, while
> Bigloo and Racket provide out of the box connections, Gambit requires
> installation of external libraries and bindings to sqlite3, for
> example, Twenty three volunteers tried to perform the installation and
> everybody failed.
> 
> Does anybody on this list know where I can find sources of gsi with
> sqlite3? As I would like to generate gsi with sqlite3 included, as in Racket.
> 
> By the way, I am insisting on adding Gambit to the Scheme compiler set
> used in the experiment, because Gambit has a nice optional
> infix syntax. I would like to check whether this alters my results.
> 
> 
> 
>  * Junia Magellan*
> 
> Doutoranda em Inteligência Artificial - Engenharia Elétrica - UFU
> Mestre em Inteligência Artificial - Ciência da Computação - UFU
> 
> Docente do IFTM - Campus Avançado Patrocínio
> 
> Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/3659680417351721
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