So Google made some research (PDF) comparing the languages C++, Scala, Go and Java. The register has a nice write up about it here. And not to my surprise C++ won hands down. At least when comparing what I’m most concerned about, speed and memory footprint.
When doing embedded stuff you really haven’t the luxury to toss more HW at a problem to solve it. I think the numbers says it all 163MB (C++) vs 617MB (Java) in memory footprint and 23 seconds execution time for C++ vs a whopping 290 seconds for 32 bit Java.
The other thing that made me react was that Scala got nice numbers in most comparisons, interesting.
Yes this is completely ripped out of context and more targeted at server environments than embedded systems. It could however have been nice to see the same research done for say C++ and Java on an embedded setup with and without the Dalvik VM.
Since I’m looking some at “App” development but have a hard time to like the Java environment of Android maybe one should take another look att Meego…
You’ll love Qt…
If I only could come to terms with MOC I actually might 🙂 (On the other hand, trying to do any productive work in GTK/Glib in C is no walk in the park either.)