Comparing the Size, Speed, and Dependability of Programming Languages

In this blog post, the author plots the results of 19 different benchmark tests across 72 programming languages to create a quantitative comparison between them. The resulting visualizations give insight into how the languages perform across a variety of tasks, and also how some some languages perform in relation to others. "If you drew the benchmark results on an XY chart you could name the four corners. The fast but verbose languages would cluster at the top left. Let's call them system languages. The elegantly concise but sluggish languages would cluster at the bottom right. Let's call them script languages. On the top right you would find the obsolete languages. That is, languages which have since been outclassed by newer languages, unless they offer some quirky attraction that is not captured by the data here. And finally, in the bottom left corner you would find probably nothing, since this is the space of the ideal language, the one which is at the same time fast and short and a joy to use."

Comments

Java

[Allicorn]

Oh but Java is a plodding, stumbling, lumbering, slug of slowness. All thoroughly indoctrinated Slashdotters know that already. No need to RTFA...

The perfect language exists, you ignorant clod!

[tomhudson]

And finally, in the bottom left corner you would find probably nothing, since this is the space of the ideal language, the one which is at the same time fast and short and a joy to use."

Plain ASCII. The shorter and faster it is, the more joy it is to use.

What can compare to the joy and speed of, for example, the command "Go fuck yourself!"

Even shorter and faster syntax: the command "F.U.!"

And for conciseness of comments - "SHIT!" and "oops!" and "WTF???"

Looping constructs: "Sit on it and rotate!"

If-else constructs: "Dat so? F.U. 2!"

foreach: "You, your mamma, and the horse you rode into town on!"

Exit statements : Just fuck off!"

c-style assertions: "Eat shit and DIE!"

#defines: "#define YOU One dumb motherfucka"

conditional #includes "#ifdef YO_MAMMA"

real-time peremption: "I OWN you, beotch!"

Re:Where are the real lanaguages???

[DoofusOfDeath]

Where Cobol and RPG, the languages that run business?

They were so far off the top and right axes, the algorithm discarded them as outliers.

HAI

[Anonymous Coward]

CAN HAS LOLCODE?
KTHXBYE

Re:C best language out there

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be better if it was extended to support classes.

Re:Why is Verbosity Bad?

[A beautiful mind]

It appears to me what this showed was that people like the walls.

True enough, but my favourite is Larry Wall.

Re:what about APL

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is so much easier to make snarky comments, eh?

[citation needed]

Writing APL

[DrYak]

If you would like APL to be on the list, then submit benchmarks for APL to the Shootout (the blog got its data fro there).

~I'm sure he would definitely like to. But he broke the necessary keyboard~

Re:Where are the real lanaguages???

[jd]

They wrapped round. You have to turn the PNG over and look at the back.

Re:What kind of verbosity?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you managed to write buggy code in the most terse and readable of them. So much for dynamic languages.