An empirical comparison of seven programming languages

Author

Prechelt, Lutz

Author_Institution

Karlsruhe Univ., Germany

Volume

33

Issue

10

fYear

2000

fDate

10/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

23

Lastpage

29

Abstract

Often heated, debates regarding different programming languages´ effectiveness remain inconclusive because of scarce data and a lack of direct comparisons. The author addresses that challenge, comparatively analyzing 80 implementations of the phone-code program in seven different languages (C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx and Tcl). Further, for each language, the author analyzes several separate implementations by different programmers. The comparison investigates several aspects of each language, including program length, programming effort, runtime efficiency, memory consumption, and reliability. The author uses comparisons to present insight into program language performance

Keywords

C language; C++ language; Java; Perl; authoring languages; programming; C language; C++; Java; Perl; Python; Rexx; Tcl; memory consumption; phone-code program; program language performance; program length; programming language comparison; runtime efficiency; software reliability; Computer languages; Java; Production; Program processors; Programming profession; Read-write memory; Runtime; Statistics; Sun; Workstations;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9162

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/2.876288

Filename

876288