C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl comparison

[Lutz Prechelt]

Dear all,

I have just completed a technical report about a study that
evaluated and compared the properties of 80 different implementations
of the same program in the above 7 different languages.

If you are interested, you can download the report from
  http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/#jccpprtTR
in either gzipped Postscript format or PDF format.

Here is the BibTeX entry and abstract:

     
@TechReport{P00-jccpprtTR,
  author = 	 "Lutz Prechelt",
  title = 	 "An Empirical Comparison of {C}, {C++}, {Java}, {Perl}, {Python}, {Rexx}, and {Tcl} for a Search/String-Processing Program",
  institution =  "Fakult{\"at} f{\"u}r Informatik, Universit{\"a}t Karlsruhe",
  year = 	 2000,
  number =       "2000-5",
  address =      "Germany",
  month =        mar,
  note =         "ftp.ira.uka.de",
  Class =        "empirical",
  abstract =     "
     80 implementations of the same set of requirements, created by 74
     different programmers in various languages, are compared for several
     properties, such as run time, memory consumption, source text length,
     comment density, program structure, reliability, and the amount of
     effort required for writing them.
     The results indicate that, for the given programming problem,
     ``scripting languages'' (Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl) are more productive
     than conventional languages. In terms of run time and memory
     consumption, they often turn out better than Java and not much worse than 
     C or C++. In general, the differences between languages tend to be
     smaller than the typical differences due to different programmers within
     the same language.",
  URL =          "http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/Biblio/#jccpprtTR"
}

Please note that the report is not intended to praise or condemn
any of the languages, neither as such nor in comparison to others.
No flames, please.

  Lutz

Lutz Prechelt  http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/ | Whenever you 
Institut f. Programmstrukturen & Datenorganisation | complicate things,
Universitaet Karlsruhe;  76128 Karlsruhe;  Germany | they get
(Phone: +49/721/608-4068, FAX: +49/721/608-7343)   | less simple.
>>> Ever had negative research results?  http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/fnr <<<