Language Shootout

I program quite a bit in my free time on various projects. I try to make sure I'm using the right tool for the job (quote the hammer and screw analogy here). Despite the range of programming tasks I've undertaken, I have only a handful of languages I use frequently: C\C++, Java, Python, and PHP. I like all these languages, but I try to make sure I choose the right one for the task. While sometimes I have to use a specific one when I absolutely need a 3rd party library, I have a few flexible ideas of when to use a given language.

C\C++ were the first two languages I learned, and they can do quite a bit. I usually choose this language when I absolutely need the fastest option available and I have the time to do the optimizations necessary to make it faster than Java--like SIMD operations.

I find Java to be a great prototyping language. By prototyping, I do not mean a prototype-based language, but a language that I can quickly develop a prototype for an idea I am playing around with. Java comes with a good GUI library, is faster than scripting languages, and has a good range of libraries to work with. I always hated doing something in C++ and realizing I needed to go hunt down a image library just to load a PNG file.

Despite what some people say, it is fast and has even beaten C\C++ on occasions--mostly where there are a lot of allocations and deallocations and the program isn't starting up and closing frequently. The Computer Language Benchmarks Game provides some performance analysis of several tests against many languages and Java is usually only ~10% slower. It is faster in some cases such as their binary-tree demo. I mentioned Chris Kulla's Sunflow ray tracer earlier, which is written in Java. He states his would be 20% faster if ported to C++, but I think his implementation is currently faster than most people's ray tracers for providing similar features.

I don't use Python much, but it's usually great for writing little scripts. I prefer this to Java as it provides faster programming for simple tasks. Although it is quite a bit slower than Java, it has a much faster init time so if I'm running the script frequently, it beats loading Java's large VM every time. Maybe that's a moot point.

PHP is only useful for writing web applications. Although this heavily limits its usefulness, nothing comes close to PHP's simplicity, ability to integrate with HTML, and huge list of useful functions. I always use PHP for anything related to dynamic web content.

I'm sure many will disagree with my criteria for languages. Some people insist ADA is the most useful language (like the creator of ADA). To each his own, but these languages have been good to me.

Reply to Comment #1
I received a comment on the "The Computer Language Benchmarks Game" link where I mentioned the test where Java beat C\C++ telling me to "note" that the Java program used a large heap, only beat C++ on one architecture, and that other C++ implementations were tested that were faster.

Language benchmarks will always lead to arguments about implementations, architectures, etc. I do not think Java is always faster than C++. I do not think Java is as fast as C++. But I do think they can be close. My point was Java beat C++ in one benchmark so to say "Java is slower" is a little unfair.

As I stated earlier, you can always make C++ faster than Java if you have the time and if speed is a concern. Chris Kulla's Sunflow ray tracer is fast--not fast for a Java ray tracer but fast for a ray tracer. I'm sure it could be much faster if he switched to C\C++, but he said it allowed faster development time at the cost of maybe 20% performance. To me, I'd rather take a performance hit like that if I had more time to make it a more feature-rich application.