Computer Speed, Here’s More

Back in June of 1989 I wrote some programs for the QL in three different languages (Forth, Pascal, and SUPERBASIC) to illustrate differing speed obtained by a threaded/interpreted language, a complied language, and our standard QL interpreted language (see 9/89 and 1/90 CATS NL). The program was a 17-line program (Superbasic version) that would determine prime numbers less than 32767, and would stop at any value entered by the user. Herb Schaaf went off toa class on “on programming and converted my code to “C” (with his improvements, of course – see 7/90 CATS NL). With his source code in “C” he had the opportunity compile the program and test it on the QL and a bunch of computers, from the QL (in its native mode and emulating an MS-DOS machine) up to a DEC VAX-8650, and even a Cray Supercomputer. Run-times varied from approximately 0.001 seconds to 2070 seconds to count all positive primes less than 32767.