Article : C++ vs Java vs Python

Having been a full-time C++ programmer for all of the past ten years, I recently had the unique opportunity of seriously studying Java almost 10-15 years after it started becoming popular. In the meantime I’m also playing with Python on a personal note. This affords me a unique perspective, of having seen the past and at the same time looking at two new languages with a fresh eye.

C++ vs Java in 2009 = Assembly vs C++ during the 1980’s
The impressions or the vibes that i get in this new learning process is eerily similar to the same doubts and choices i felt / read about during the initial stages of my education, while playing around with assembly, C++ and Visual Basic.

Assembly was THE choice if speed and memory choices was paramount and nothing else mattered but it was damn hard to use. All the old timers claimed you had to know assembly to understand whats happening on the system and that C++ was only for productivity improvements. They lamented about how new minds never learned / worked seriously with assembly and hence where at a disadvantage when it came to figuring out what really happened inside the box

However at the time (1980) C++ was fast catching up, even embedded systems where moving to C++(maybe without using the templates feature). Java currently is in the same state that C++ used to be in 1980 wrt assembly and there are many who clamour for C or C++ to be taught in universities rather than Java for the sake of better understanding.

How can Java be as fast as C++?
It is not. However the hardware that is around now is vastly superior to 1980 and 1990 hardware, which made Java seem slow THEN, in the same way C++ seemed slow in all those small devices compared to raw assembly or binary code. Our current crop of laptops are more powerful than the servers used during the time when Java was beginning to get popular. This improvement in hardware makes the difference in speed highly immaterial for all practical purposes, because human beings cannot make out the difference all that much between 500 and 50 microseconds.

Fast forward to 2010
C++ is what you require if you need pure speed like in the critical loops or core libraries. You could substitute the word Assembly instead of C++, in the previous line, had this post been written 15 years back.

But Java is more useful from a business point of view for application development due to increased productivity and more features. It is therefore no coincidence then that embedded devices like mobile phones (and even dog collars, according to Java books) are now running Java. In fact the lost Nokia mobile phone that i bought was guided by the factor that it had a data port using which i could upload custom Java program onto it.

Java vs Python = C++ vs Visual Basic
When C++ used to be THE top language around, and assembly was gradually being kicked to the ground, there was something else in periphery, which was Visual Basic and all other RAD languages, which basically gave you forms based development and automatic memory management.

However they were nowhere as fast as C++ and hence where relegated to internal IT applications, which never needed to be as slick as professional, cool looking applications and could be developed fast enough.

Fast development is very critical when it comes to small shops with less resources or IT departments on a shoe string budget. Many business applications certainly fit the bill and where developed on Visual Basic. It is exactly the same situation now with Python when comparing it to Java.

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Courtesy:- computinglife.wordpress.com