Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Comparing the Size, Speed, and Dependability of Programming Languages

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-not-the-size-of-the-float dept.

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."

2 of 491 comments (clear)

  1. javascript for example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    there was a time, not long ago, you could actually click on an article on the front page to read the comments. Now you get page load errors unless you allow scripts from fsdn.org. why ?

  2. C best language out there by Murdoch5 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Personally I'd pick C as being the best all around programming language to work with, and that is C NOT C++. C has all the features needed in a great programming lang (PL) . You can interface close enough to the hardware for complete control, you can inline assembler right into the code. The preprocessing feature work awesome, using macros to replace short functions, even the library's a user has access to. The syntax is great to work with, it's a quick to temp up PL, you can really make a functional program in less then 2 min that has meaning, with out comments mind you.

    C is available on all modern platforms, C has the best compiler of all time on it's side GCC, The GTK / Gnome environment is even based off C. C has everything needed in PL to make it the number 1 pick of all time. Needless to say it's also stood the test of time.