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Java Vs. C#: Which Performs Better In the 'Real World'?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Software developer Jeff Cogswell writes: 'Let's compare Java and C#, two programming languages with large numbers of ardent fans and equally virulent detractors. I'm not interested in yet another test that grindingly calculates a million digits' worth of Pi. I want to know about real-world performance: How does each language measure up when asked to dish out millions of Web pages a day? How do they compare when having to grab data from a database to construct those pages dynamically? The results were quite interesting.' Having worked as a professional C# programmer for many years, Cogswell found some long-held assumptions challenged."
It's also interesting to note that all tests were done on Windows. Despite him using Tomcat for Java and IIS for C# because that's the "typical" usage, he then completely does an about-face and deploys the Tomcat on Windows-- a configuration I've actually never seen and which has to give C# a bit of an advantage as the vendor-supplied OS. And yet Java still won when talking about doing anything substantial...
E pluribus unum
On the other hand, C#'s syntax has ruined java for me. Many simple tasks in java feel like they take 3 times as many steps as they need to: e.g. overloading a method with an optional bool defaulting to false requires actually writing a new overload and passing the default. To be fair, there are times when python or a functional language makes C# feel the same way, but java is just too far removed on the convenience factor for me.
I've been doing Java development for 15+ years and most of that in web apps. Production deployments to Linux, mainframes, and Windows. Sadly, most often, the production machines are Windows. A typical argument is that it is best to have the production system similar to development (and QA, and integration testing, and user acceptance testing) system to avoid surprises as the build travels through the process.
Concerning portability of Java across platforms, I can only recall having three issues and they are all related to file systems: paths (developer assumption), permissions, and Windows misreporting file creation time. For Java web apps, your portability issues are the same regardless of language--the browsers.
For a true comparison of Java to C#, I can only think of one way to do it. Give four weeks of identical requirements to two teams, one of C# fanbois and one of Java fanbois. Limit them to three development weeks each, and then judge by features completed and application performance. Switch teams and complete the job. Try a larger project to flush out the architecture set up phase and then adjust your results by availability of skilled resources in the market.
No, that's not fine tuned enough. Standard practice here is to program an FPGA to do the less important work, with wire wrapped transistors doing anything that needs to perform well.
Anything less is, well, lazy.
From what (little) I know, that's exactly what data warehouse appliances like Netezza and Teradata do. They have custom built FPGAs to do the SQL execution significantly faster than what a CPU can do.