The Doug Bagley Computer Language Shootout
I cited The Doug Bagley Computer Language Shootout in a recent paper on eye movement modeling. Commenting on the incommensurability problem the field is facing:
When everything else fails, this is how computer scientists (enthusiasts?) settle arguments over their favorite computer languages (Fulgham, 2005). But that misses the point of eye movement modeling.
The satire wasn’t totally fair to the Great Computer Language Shootout. Satires never are.
The truth is, I have always liked the Great Shootout, and I’ve used it when I was trying to decide between scripting languages. I would very much want to do a Shootout for eye movement models, if I had the tenure, of course.
But it happended to be the best example of what I was looking for for the point I wanted to make. I do think I have a point. It makes sense to do a feature comparison when you are comparing tools; but if the question is which model is a better model for a phenomenon, the criterion should be how close the model is to the reality, not how many (trivial) "effects" it covers.
If the above makes no sense to you, then it’s not of concern to you. Just forget my munble. Here is a very very bried history of the Great Shootout. Someone got to write something about it, IMHO.
Who…? Who started "The Great Computer Language Shootout"?
Doug Bagley created "The Great Computer Language Shootout", and it was active until 2001.
Aldo Calpini ported that to create "The Great Win32 Computer Language Shootout" - it was last updated June 2003.
In mid-2004 Brent Fulgham revived "The Great Computer Language Shootout" here on Alioth Debian.org
In the following months, things started to change. First, the website was redesigned. Then benchmarks were deprecated. Then new benchmarks were added. Who knows where it will end
Doug Bagley leaves little info about hisself.