[Falgantil]

A very simple test is, try making a loop, writing "Hello there HackCommunity", say 1.000.000 times or so, in both languages. Start them at the same time and see what finishes first.
Unless something has changes drastically since last time I checked, it should be the C# code that finishes first.

That is so far off from being true... I love C#, but C/C++ is definitely faster, and I will never admit that that C# is better than any other language either; being a fanboy of a programming language gets you into trouble. I would rather keep an open mind.

if you recall what I said before C# and VB.NET go through something called JIT compilation at runtime. the CLR manually babysits the program at runtime, and is responsible for exception handling, memory management, and many other things. C/C++ is much faster for this reason, unless you're doing something really wrong, or your benchmark tests are really really screwed up. For that reason, C/C++ programs use less memory than .NET programs (unless you are a bad programmer and you do not properly manage memory in your C/C++ applications. That's called memory leaks though).

I really don't understand your server, vs games reference though...

If what you're saying is really true, then explain to me how a C++ program writing Hello World 100000 times, and a C# doing the same, that C# finished after about 4 seconds, and the C++ finished after 17 seconds.
Might differ on computers of course. But the statement remains true, that C# is faster than C++ at executing the same code over and over. Which in most cases are just servers doing that

~ Falgantil ~

Lets test that, what C++ code were you using and what C# code were you using? Are you even confident that the code was a fair comparison? You did read that C# manages things for you in the background? I know that there is no reason for there to be that large of a difference... But C is definitely faster than C#.

edit: Read this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13836...s-c-than-c

There is no strict reason why a bytecode based language like C# or Java that has a JIT cannot be as fast as C++ code. However C++ code used to be significantly faster for a long time, and also today still is in many cases. This is mainly due to the more advanced JIT optimizations being complicated to implement, and the really cool ones are only arriving just now.

So C++ is faster, in many cases. But this is only part of the answer. The cases where C++ is actually faster, are highly optimized programs, where expert programmers thoroughly optimized the hell out of the code. This is not only very time consuming (and thus expensive), but also commonly leads to errors due to over-optimizations.

On the other hand, code in interpreted languages gets faster in later versions of the runtime (.NET CLR or Java VM), without you doing anything. And there are a lot of useful optimizations JIT compilers can do that are simply impossible in languages with pointers. Also, some argue that garbage collection should generally be as fast or faster as manual memory management, and in many cases it is. You can generally implement and achieve all of this in C++ or C, but it's going to be much more complicated and error prone.

As Donald Knuth said, "premature optimization is the root of all evil". If you really know for sure that your application will mostly consist of very performance critical arithmetic, and that it will be the bottleneck, and it's certainly going to be faster in C++, and you're sure that C++ won't conflict with your other requirements, go for C++. In any other case, concentrate on first implementing your application correctly in whatever language suits you best, then find performance bottlenecks if it runs too slow, and then think about how to optimize the code. In the worst case, you might need to call out to C code through a foreign function interface, so you'll still have the ability to write critical parts in lower level language.

Keep in mind that it's relatively easy to optimize a correct program, but much harder to correct an optimized program.

Giving actual percentages of speed advantages is impossible, it largely depends on your code. In many cases, the programming language implementation isn't even the bottleneck. Take the benchmarks at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ with a great deal of scepticism, as these largely test arithmetic code, which is most likely not similar to your code at all.

What this says to me is that you really can't compare these 2 languages. Simple as that... Optimizations depend on the skill of the programmer, and due to the CLR changing over time with many JIT optimizations along the way, it might as well be comparing optimized code to something not as optimized in comparison. You'd need to understand what the CLR does to make an accurate comparison, but in the end it really comes down to what the code looks like on a lower level.

C is a fast language though, that's just a known fact. It's good for more procedural based programs, and you may consider C++ over C for more object oriented projects. For development time, .NET might be better than a choice of C or C++. That is also a known fact, and it is the reasons why I get people coming to me asking me to develop their business related programs in .NET (usually C#, but sometimes VB.NET).

I should think that C++'s "cout" and C#'s "Console.WriteLine" is more or less equal, processing-wise.
Note that I am not saying that C++ is a bad language in any way. I'm just saying that sometimes you'd want to consider whether C++ is actually the best choice, even if you're very good at it.

~ Falgantil ~

[ArkPhaze]

I read this:

An area where I saw mentioned (I don't have tested this myself) that C# is supposed to be more consistently efficient is repeated memory allocation (as it is based on a GC, allocating memory is done in chunks and managed by the GC and releasing can be differed while the C++ code immediately allocates and releases each chunks from/to the OS immediately resulting in slower repeated memory allocations). But once again on the other hand the GC could kick in at unexpected times so it's hard to qualify this as an advantage/disavantage.

But the most important part is where he talks about the GC, which is a feature of the CLR I believe. Sure things may not be immediately released, but if the GC ever decides that it is time to clean up... That is a very computationally expensive task.

---

I should think that C++'s "cout" and C#'s "Console.WriteLine" is more or less equal, processing-wise.
Note that I am not saying that C++ is a bad language in any way. I'm just saying that sometimes you'd want to consider whether C++ is actually the best choice, even if you're very good at it.

~ Falgantil ~

You would be wrong to think that.

Code:

    std::cout << "hello world";
0013219E  push        13EF24h  
001321A3  mov         eax,dword ptr ds:[001423DCh]  
001321A8  push        eax  
001321A9  call        std::operator<<<std::char_traits<char> > (01312FDh)  
001321AE  add         esp,8

And only some of what goes on through the above:

Code:

[std::operator<<<std::char_traits<char> >:]
00FB12FD  jmp         std::operator<<<std::char_traits<char> > (0FB2210h)

[template<class _Traits> inline
    basic_ostream<char, _Traits>& operator<<(
        basic_ostream<char, _Traits>& _Ostr,
        const char *_Val)
    {    // insert NTBS into char stream]
00FB2210  push        ebp  
00FB2211  mov         ebp,esp  


[template<class _Traits> inline
    basic_ostream<char, _Traits>& operator<<(
        basic_ostream<char, _Traits>& _Ostr,
        const char *_Val)
    {    // insert NTBS into char stream]
00FB2213  push        0FFFFFFFFh  
00FB2215  push        0FB9F48h  
00FB221A  mov         eax,dword ptr fs:[00000000h]  
00FB2220  push        eax  
00FB2221  push        ecx  
00FB2222  sub         esp,154h  
00FB2228  push        ebx  
00FB2229  push        esi  
00FB222A  push        edi  
00FB222B  lea         edi,[ebp-164h]  
00FB2231  mov         ecx,55h  
00FB2236  mov         eax,0CCCCCCCCh  
00FB223B  rep stos    dword ptr es:[edi]  
00FB223D  mov         eax,dword ptr ds:[00FC10C4h]  
00FB2242  xor         eax,ebp  
00FB2244  mov         dword ptr [ebp-14h],eax  
00FB2247  push        eax  
00FB2248  lea         eax,[ebp-0Ch]  
00FB224B  mov         dword ptr fs:[00000000h],eax  
00FB2251  mov         dword ptr [ebp-10h],esp


(cont...)

[    static size_t __CLRCALL_OR_CDECL length(const _Elem *_First)
        {    // find length of null-terminated string]
00FB5DA3  sub         esp,0C4h  
00FB5DA9  push        ebx  
00FB5DAA  push        esi  
00FB5DAB  push        edi  
00FB5DAC  lea         edi,[ebp-0C4h]  
00FB5DB2  mov         ecx,31h  
00FB5DB7  mov         eax,0CCCCCCCCh  
00FB5DBC  rep stos    dword ptr es:[edi]

Now for console.WriteLine in C#:

Code:

Console.Write("hello world");
0000001a  mov         rcx,0B510003338h
00000024  mov         rcx,qword ptr [rcx]
00000027  call        000000005E37A1E0
0000002c  nop

What gets called:

Code:

00000000  push        rbx
00000001  push        rdi
00000002  sub         rsp,28h
00000006  mov         rdi,rcx
00000009  mov         edx,0AEh
0000000e  mov         ecx,1
00000013  call        FFFFFFFFFFF78050
00000018  mov         rbx,rax
0000001b  mov         rax,qword ptr [rbx+000000D0h]
00000022  test        rax,rax
00000025  jne         0000000000000030
00000027  mov         cl,1
00000029  call        0000000000000120
0000002e  xchg        ax,ax
00000030  mov         r11,qword ptr [rbx+000000D0h]
00000037  mov         rax,qword ptr [r11]
0000003a  mov         rax,qword ptr [rax+58h]
0000003e  mov         rdx,rdi
00000041  mov         rcx,r11
00000044  mov         rax,qword ptr [rax+10h]
00000048  add         rsp,28h
0000004c  pop         rdi
0000004d  pop         rbx
0000004e  jmp         rax
00000051  add         rsp,28h
00000055  pop         rdi
00000056  pop         rbx
00000057  ret

[iNanox]

its a bit buggy but good job

[iNanox]

its a bit buggy but good job

[iNanox]

its a bit buggy but good job

[iNanox]

its a bit buggy but good job

[iNanox]

its a bit buggy but good job