Java Runtime Performance Vs Native C / C++ Code?

Question

I\'ve become more and more comfortable programming in Java than with C++ or C. I am hoping to get a sense of the performance hit incurred using a JVM interpreter, as oppose

Answer 1

Both java and c# (and objective-c) are not nearly as fast as native code can be. But that only matters if you have a problem where you are not engineering-time limited. Because you'll have the time to devise a better algorithm with a high level language.

So basically, if you're developing a device where you're going to build a million a year of, or that is battery powered, you don't use java or c# to build its core functionality. You might add a lisp interpreter to make customisation easy, though. Microsoft is not going to use c# for say the core of SQL server, where performance really matters. Visual Studio on the other hand, where MS can expect users to have high-end hardware, can be used as a showcase for slow but high productivity technology.

Please note that I currently do most of my programming in Pharo Smalltalk, which is a lot slower than java, c# or objective-c, and is not even one of the fastest Smalltalks. Productivity trumps performance.