Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.
   -- Dr. Wilhelm Stekhel

You can prove anything with a "properly" selected "benchmark". I'm sure if you run the same insane "benchmark" in C you'll get much better results than in Java ... does it mean anything? Do you really think it's wise to chose a language based on something like this?

Unless maybe if you do some heavy numerical math. And even in that case you'd better do just the math in C/Fortran and the rest in something more high level. How important will it be that your program takes five minutes to do what your competitor's need ten if it takes YOU 6 months more to release it?

How much time do your applications spend doing simple math? How many times did you actually need to do anything even remotely similar to what your "benchmark" measures?

Jenda

P.S.: If you did believe Perl is dead you would not need to post this. The people who use the strongest words fear the most.

I like the OO in Perl. I like the functional features in Perl. I like that I can be both strict and dirty in Perl, just as I need at a moment. You can like what you want, we'll see the results.