[plt-scheme] A Comment on MzScheme Performance vis-a-vis Web Applications

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I have incorporated Matthew Flatt's many useful updates to the "old  
Doug Bagley" benchmarks, and the differences are substantial.   
MzScheme is often faster than Java, and nearly always uses less  
memory.  When compared to Python, MzScheme wins some and loses sum --  
it seems that string handling may be part of the problem (many of the  
old tests were heavily dependent on string performance).  MzScheme is  
substantially better than Ruby in almost all tests, with the notable  
exception of word counting and word frequency.

"http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/old/benchmark.php? 
test=all&lang=mzscheme&lang2=ruby"

One thing that shocked me was how substantial an improvement could be  
gained simply by wrapping the program in a module declaration.

MzScheme's performance on the newer tests is still pretty bad, but I  
suspect a little review by Eli and Matthew will substantially help in  
these areas.

Thanks for everyone's comments -- it's been a useful learning  
experience for me.

Thanks!

- -Brent
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