Objective evidence comparing languages?

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David Mathog - 10 Nov 2005 16:02 GMT

I'm looking for studies that objectively compare various languages to
measure the following attributes:

1. Ease of writing new code (better== faster, better==fewer bugs).
2. Ease of maintaining existing code.
3. Portability.
4. Time to learn language "adequately".
5. Speed of resulting code.

The last time I saw such a study was almost 10 years ago, compared only
C and Ada, and was found here:

http://www.rational.com/support/techpapers/c_and_ada.html

That URL is long dead but the contents are still available from the URL
via the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org.

Where are the recent equivalent studies?

Please, nobody reply with "X is better than Y because..." - I'm not
looking for opinions, I'm searching for studies that objectively
demonstrate the differences between languages.

Thanks,

David Mathog
mathog@caltech.edu

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Stavros Christoforou - 10 Nov 2005 16:10 GMT

> I'm looking for studies that objectively compare various languages to
> measure the following attributes:
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> 5. Speed of resulting code.
> ...

> Please, nobody reply with "X is better than Y because..." - I'm not
> looking for opinions, I'm searching for studies that objectively
> demonstrate the differences between languages.

What you are asking for is impossible, because of the points you are
looking for. Points 1 and 4 depend of the programmer and their way of
thinking (type of education plays a major role here), point 5 depends on
the application and point 2 depends on the foresight and skills of the
original programmer. The only real comparison can be done for point 3.

Stavros

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Eric Sosman - 10 Nov 2005 17:10 GMT

David Mathog wrote On 11/10/05 11:02,:

> I'm looking for studies that objectively compare various languages to
> measure the following attributes:
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> 4. Time to learn language "adequately".
> 5. Speed of resulting code.

A CACM article from about, oh, maybe six years ago
compared C, C++, and Java on a couple of these measures.
Sorry for the imprecision of the reference.

Signature

Eric.Sosman@sun.com

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Malcolm - 10 Nov 2005 21:09 GMT

> I'm looking for studies that objectively compare various languages to
> measure the following attributes:
[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]
> looking for opinions, I'm searching for studies that objectively
> demonstrate the differences between languages.

It's very hard to come up with an objective metric.

For instance, for criterion 1, are you looking at university undergraduates,
programmers in fairly routine commercial systems type jobs, scientific
programmers, programmers for orgainisations like IBM?
If we choose the first, do we mean computer science graduates from top
universities, or are we talking about physicists and biologists who want to
do a little bit of programming as a supplement to their main interest?

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Jack Klein - 11 Nov 2005 03:31 GMT

> I'm looking for studies that objectively compare various languages to
> measure the following attributes:
[quoted text clipped - 20 lines]
>
> Thanks,

Learn how to use a proper signature line, please.

Your question is off-topic in all three groups that you cross-posted
it to. Language comparisons in language specific groups tend to
quickly degenerate into advocacy and flames. And of course, C++ and
Java are off-topic in comp.lang.c, Java at least is off-topic in
comp.lang.c++, etc.

If you are looking for a serious discussion I would suggest
comp.programming and comp.software.eng as your best candidates.

Signature

Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
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Objective evidence comparing languages?

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