Python

[wrigley]

What you have read would be both true and stil not true, because the speed optimising in Java perhaps is easier to implement than in C, I don't know. And if we this is the case to the general programmer, Java would be faster. But if we imagine the programmers skill to be unlimited, writing faster or even same-speed code in Java would be impossible. Here's why:

If you write in C once your program is written, you would compile it to binary language, which when executed would run at top speed.

If you write in Java (or any other interpreted language) once your program is written, you would compile it to new code, which when executed had first to be interpreted before being able to run at top speed.

This means that any (well coded) non-interpreted language, would always be faster than its interpreted counterpart, as it does not need to be interpreted before being able run.

/wrigley

[Arcane Wizard]

With intelligent/just-in-time interpreters, this is not nessecarily true as the delay from interpreting it is drastically reduced and then some. It also depends on how efficient the code that is actually executed is, a C program can be compiled into such inefficient binary code that, in the end, it runs slower than an interpreted program that is compiled into such efficient code that it overcomes the delay in speed caused by the actual interpreting.

Also, C is rather slow with I/O operations compared to other languages, and I believe Java is faster with some kind of calculation (I don't think floating point math, but something like that). Therefor, even if the program is technically perfectly written it could still very easily be slower than an interpreted language that is faster at performing I/O operations. I don't know if this is caused by the specific instructions given by compiled c code being slow or simply because I/O operations are compiled into inefficient code.

In the end though, generally speaking Java and C's speed are very much comparable. Java, and probably many interpreted languages with it, simply is very fast.

Java does use more RAM though, since the runtime environment needs to be loaded, so that could cause slower performance, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's great at threading.

The issue is comparable to C++'s development. When it was still new it was very slow, as was Java, but these days it's practically as fast as C is, maybe even faster. Many people still think it's slow though, probably after reading old articles. :+

[wrigley]

I/O are not actually part of the core C/C++ language, they reside in library files usually included with the compiler. If these I/O operations are too slow, the imaginary programmer whose skill is unlimited (as supposed in my example from before) he would simply write new I/O functions that were faster (a thing which by the way is not possible, as far as I know in Java).

In the real world however, no programmer has unlimited skill, and also it would be a bit over the top writing a whole set of I/O-functions for say a mere "Hello world!" program . Therefore the speed could easily be better for Java code, when counting in factors such as the skill and the time required to write the code. So all in all, different languages will have the advantage in different cases.

/wrigley

[CoBB]