GreyWizard's Journal: Not So Hot

Please don't pester me with breathless praise of HotSpot. I understand and agree that it is in principle possible for dynamically compiled Java code to be faster than C code in some cases. However in practice this just doesn't happen. All of my C applications run significantly faster than equivalent Java applications for all cases I have ever tested. I consistently test with the latest Sun JRE and periodically retry old tests.

I also concede that higher productivity can outweigh higher performance in many cases, and that some programmers do better in this regard when using Java. I'm not one of them. My productivity is consistently higher with object oriented C or C++. Feel free to presume that this is because I don't know this or that important facet of using Java effectively, but try not to think about how this undermines the argument that Java is easier to use. ;-)