From: bc@freeuk.com   
      
   On 26/10/2025 06:25, Janis Papanagnou wrote:   
   > (This reply is not meant for bart, but rather for all interested   
   > folks who should not get repelled by his FUD posts.)   
   >   
   > On 25.10.2025 00:18, bart wrote:   
   >> [...]   
   >>   
   >> (I remember trying to build A68G, an interpreter, on Windows, and the   
   >> 'configure' step was a major obstacle. But I was willing to isolate the   
   >> 12 C source files involved, then it was built in one second.   
   >>   
   >> I did of course try building it in Linux too, and it took about 5   
   >> minutes that I recall, using a spinnning hard drive, mostly spent   
   >> running through that configure script.   
   >   
   > (I don't know what system or system configuration the poster runs.   
   > I'm well aware that if you are using the Windows platform you may   
   > suffer from many things; but the platform choice is your decision!   
   > But maybe he's just misremembering; and nonetheless spreading FUD.)   
   >   
   > I've a quite old (~16+ years old) Linux system that was back these   
   > days when I bought it already at the _very low performance range_.   
   > With this old system the ./configure needs less than 10 seconds,   
   > and the build process with make about _half a minute_ for the whole   
   > a68g Genie system. - The whole procedure, from software download,   
   > extraction, configure/make, and start an Algol application, needs   
   > one minute! (Make that two minutes if you are typing v_e_r_y slowly   
   > or have a slow download link. Or just put the necessary commands in   
   > a shell file; just did that and it needed (including the download)   
   > less than 45 seconds, and ready to run.)   
      
      
   The 5 minutes I quoted may have been for CPython. It would be for some   
   Linux running under VirtualBox on a 2010 cheapest-in-the-shop PC.   
      
   If I try A68G now, under WSL, using a 2021 second-cheapest PC but with   
   SSD, I get:   
      
       ./configure   20 seconds   
       make          90 seconds   
      
   Trying CDECL again (I've done it several times after deleting the folder):   
      
       ./configure   35 seconds   
       make          49 seconds   
      
   However the A68G configure script is 11000 lines; the CDECL one 31600 lines.   
      
   (I wonder why the latter needs 20000 more lines? I guess nobody is   
   curious - or they simply don't care. OK, let's make 100,000 and see if   
   anyone complains! Is it possible this is some elaborate joke on the part   
   of auto-conf to discover just how trusting and tolerant people can be?)   
      
      
   Anyway, I then tried this new 3.10 A68G on the Fannkuch(9) benchmark:   
      
       a68g fann.a68  5 seconds   
       ./fann       3+3 seconds (via a68g --compile -O3 fann.a68)   
      
   I then tried it under my scripting language (not statically typed):   
      
       qq fann  0.4 seconds (qq built with my non-optimising compiler)   
      
   'qq' takes about 0.1 seconds to build - under Windows which is   
   considered slow for development. So, 1000 times faster to build, and it   
   runs this program at least, 10 times faster, despite being dynamically   
   typed.   
      
   This is the vast difference between my world and yours.   
      
    >The whole procedure, from software download,   
    > extraction, configure/make, and start an Algol application, needs   
    > one minute!   
      
   Only one minute; impressive! How about this:   
      
      c:\qx>tm mm -r \mx\mm -r qq hello   
      Hello World   
      TM: 0.21   
      
   This runs my systems language /from source code/, whch then runs my   
   interpreter /from source code/ (ie. compiles into memory and runs   
   immediately) then runs that test program.   
      
   In 1/5th of a second (or 1/300th of a minute). This is equivalent to   
   first compiling gcc from source (and all those extra utilities you seem   
   to need) before using it/them to build a68g. I guess that would take a   
   bit more than a minute.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)