How fast is Squeak?

The speed results published on the io web site picked my curiosity a while ago and I was wondering if I could get the Tester translated for Squeak and compare Squeak with other popular dynamic languages. Tester new test, here are the results…

As someone commented on this post, declaring the variables beforehand really gives a speed advantage to Squeak since it doesn’t have to allocate the slots on the fly.

Squeak seems relatively faster than other languages but in practice, version 3.8 is barely usable on this computer. If you own an old computer, you may prefer the latest 3.9 release or any Squeakland release, which both provide a more satisfying experience.

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Published:: 07.21.06 / 8am

Category:: Io, Python, Ruby, Smalltalk, Squeak

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Anonymous 2006-07-23

When comparing speed, it’s important to undertand the semantic differences between languages. For example, languages like Io can add locals at runtime while Squeak, like C++, forces locals to be declared. This allows Squeak and C++ to allocate a stack frame to a fixed size for the method and access locals via index instead of hash table lookup. Likewise for instance variables and other index-based lookup mechanisms that either make assumptions about how often types change or the number of one-off types in the system.

Just as C++ is faster than Squeak because of it’s assumptions, Squeak is faster than these languages because of it’s assumptions. Which is great as long as those assumptions suite your style of programming and problem domain.
Shawn MacIntyre 2006-10-11

Here are the results on a 2.66 Mac Pro:

localAccesses 125.0
localSets 76.9230769230769
slotAccesses 125.0
slotSets 71.4285714285714
blockActivations 38.46153846153846
instantiations 5.68181818181818

The results are very consistient…

Squeak, Smalltalk and OOP

How fast is Squeak?

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