C++ vs. Java vs. C# vs. php

1. Comparison of
Programming
Platforms
C++ vs. Java vs. C# vs. PHP
Presentation By
Anup Hariharan Nair
Date: 23 December
2011
http://HiFiCoding.com/
Prepared using :

2. What's new ?
 Looks are everything
 Hardware accelerated graphics
 WPF on .NET, Java FX, Adobe FLEX.
 Dynamic Equation
 Dynamic language support in .NET 4, Java SE 7 and C++11(C++0X).
 Parallel Computing
 Mergers and Acquisitions
 Acquisition of Sun Microsystems and BEA by ORACLE

3. Major programming
Platforms
 C++ (QT/BOOST/WT/C++0x)
 JAVA (ME,SE,EE)
 C# (MONO/.NET)
 PHP/PERL/PYTHON(LAMP)

4. C++ (QT/WT/Boost/C++11)
 Pros:
 The most widely used programming language.
 Works in almost any platform known to mankind.
 Fastest Platform. No other can compare it.
 Probably millions of libraries available for C++ on the internet.
 “There is a Library for that”.
 Every major computer companies in the world employ C++.
 Virtually all major applications like Google Earth, Adobe
Photoshop, VMware, Skype etc… is written in C++.

5. C++ (QT/WT/Boost/C++11)
 Cons:
 Coding is a little complex.
 You have to take care of memory references on your own.
 GUI development and library references looks cryptic when compared to Java
& C#.

6. C++ (QT/WT/Boost/C++11)
 Present trend:
 C++11
• New specification C++11(C++0x), is a true successor to the existing
specification C++03.
• Significant improvement over the existing C++ specification includes
generic programming support and performance enhancements.
 Dynamic type Support using “auto” keyword.
 Need for an easy framework for developing hardware accelerated graphics
based GUI.
 On 9th May 2011, it was announced that Qt 5 would be released in 2012.
 Main objective of Qt5 is to make better use of GPU, and accelerated
graphics, with minimal complexity.

7. JAVA Platform (ME/SE/EE)
 Pros:
 Cross Platform.
 Managed Code environment using JVM.
 Business Applications development companies like SAP, Oracle, etc; have
been long supporters of JAVA.
 One of the Simplest Languages.

8. JAVA Platform (ME/SE/EE)
 Cons:
 Performance.
• Java makes use of interpreted byte code, and it also needs to load a ton
of frameworks before it actually starts executing the main program.
• JIT compiler is also of little help as it only compiles interpreted byte code
to machine code on the fly and does not start until the program has been
running for a while.
• Compared to other languages like Perl or Ruby, Java is still fast.

9. JAVA Platform (ME/SE/EE)
 Client-Server
 Once a client/server application is started, only responsibility of the
Application server is to respond to the HTTP requests and call compilers,
interpreters and other HTTP modules as needed.
 So in this paradigm, Java is not slow and is the principal reason why
Business Application developers like SAP and Oracle still trust JAVA.
 The notion that JAVA runs almost as fast as C++ is just not true (at least for
now).
 Compiled C++ is possibly 10 times faster.

10. JAVA Platform (ME/SE/EE)
 Performance of JAVA when compared to .NET/MONO?
 Architecturally .NET and MONO are very similar to JAVA. .NET on windows
is faster than JAVA.
 JAVA 1.6 memory usage is still more than 2 times when compared to .NET
4.0.
 Also the initialization and deletion operation of types is slower compared to
.NET, which is the principle reason why .Net applications run faster than
JAVA.
 In case of MONO, though memory initialization and deletion is nearly equal to
JAVA, the memory usage is half, which surprisingly implies that even MONO
can outperform JAVA.

11. C# (.NET/MONO)
 Compilation frameworks
 .NET
 MONO

12. C# on .NET
 Architecturally .NET is very much similar to JAVA, except that the
core framework only runs on windows or other Microsoft
supported platforms.
 However the .NET framework and Application Server (IIS) is not
open.
 One will not have the flexibility to add custom modules as easily
as in case of LAMP, JAVA, or MONO.
 Most consumers and developers find this monopolistic and are
always cautious while choosing this framework.

13. C# on .NET
 Architectural criticisms
 “Web Forms vs. MVC”. Server based Web-Forms architecture speeds up the
time required to create a Web Application by employing Server Controls and
associating events to those controls.
 At execution, server controls are converted to the native HTML client controls.
 Major limitations of Server based Web-Forms Architecture:
 There is an overhead of compiling the Server controls and converting them
back to the Client side controls.
 Certain logic is best applied when you have perfect control over the HTTP
request.

14. C# on .NET
 Certain logic is best applied when you have perfect control over
the HTTP request.
 Example - one wants to create number of HTML input types based on a
condition.
 In the classic Form Get/Post model, we can simple apply a “for loop” and
create the input controls in the mark-up page, but with server controls, we
have code that as Server Script and identify how to associate the Post back
event with the controls which is an inefficient programming model.
 The Client Side selection of elements using DOM or jQuery is
horrible as you have to realize the name of processed input tags.

 The classic Form Get/Post model exists by default in .NET, but
what people criticized was the inefficient research while
proposing a programming architecture to developers.

15. C# on .NET
 But 80% of the time you don’t need that degree of control. Make
no mistake; the industrial acceptance of Web-Forms was huge.
 Even Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) implemented JSF (Java
Server Faces) specification to enable development in a Web
Forms Architecture using Java.
 To counter the criticism, Microsoft also gave the option of MVC
(Model View Controller) specification based ASP.NET
development in .NET 3+. There was huge criticism in terms of
how the implementation was done.
 With MVC 3+ Microsoft plans to remove all possible criticisms.

16. C# on .NET
 All and all, .NET is great platform for development as long as you
and the customer have no issues with using a complete Microsoft
Environment for entire application lifecycle.
 Performance as compared to C++ compiled application is still
slower.
 But similar to the case of Java, .NET has the benefit of reduced
coding complexity when compared to C++.
 The performance of a .NET application running on windows is
faster compared to a similar Java application.

17. C# on MONO
 MONO is an open community platform; that brings the power of
C# specification defined by ECMA and Microsoft to all POSIX
platforms as well as Windows.
 When it was released, it only allowed for Console and Web
application development. Since GDI based forms implementation
would not work on other Operating systems, Desktop application
development was not present in earlier versions of MONO.

18. C# on MONO
 However, recently the community created GTK# (GUI Took Kit
Sharp) which is a C# implementation of GTK+ (in C++).
 So now, MONO developers are equally capable of creating
Console, Desktop and Client-Server applications.
 Nowadays MONO is also capable of creating application that
work on Android & iPhone; something .NET framework will never
support.

19. C# on MONO
 Also, MONO removes the limitation of .NET of being a closed
system.
 We can implement my own modules to the core framework or the
application server like Apache.
 We can even make use of existing apache framework modules
for my Client/Server application.

20. C# on MONO
 So the question is what’s wrong with this platform?
 Mono is relatively new.
 It is still not a credible platform to work on.
 There are number of situations where you will find your console application
hung for no reason.
 Your ASP.NET page breaks and your code is not the culprit; it’s the
framework which is at fault.
 It is an open source initiative from Novell Inc and has not completely matured
yet.

21. C# on MONO
 However, it should be pointed out that MONO is ”surprisingly
fast”.
 If you try to compare a Client-Server application developed in
JAVA & an exact implementation in C# on MONO you will be
surprised to find that MONO is fast.
 However until the time it becomes more mature & stable, it is
strictly recommended not to develop application in C# on MONO.

22. PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP)
 Of the three P’s; PHP is the most widely used. LAMP is primarily
employed for Client- Server (Web) development.
 Almost 70% of all open source applications are written in LAMP.
 Major giants like Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook etc; make use LAMP
for developing most of their applications.
 LAMP is the most dominating platform for web (client/server)
development, and there is a very good reason for that.

23. PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP)
 There are possibly 1000’s or more open source
frameworks, which significantly simplify the overall development
time.
 Also they are very highly featured.
 Though PHP code may look cryptic at first but it is really simple to
code.
 Also there is a framework for every web development; you will
end up coding very few lines of code.

24. PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP)
 Dynamic Language paradigm:
 It should be pointed out that PHP is dynamic programming language.
 Being a Dynamic language as compared to a Static language like C++, JAVA
or C# has certain advantages when it comes to development of Database
driven Applications in terms of the overall memory consumption.
 Compiler does most of the calculation of allocating the memory to Types
based on its usage.
 It is so significant that Microsoft added “System. Dynamic” namespace in its
.NET 4.0 to support Dynamic Type based specification for C#, VB.NET and
other .NET supported languages. Oracle also added support for Dynamically
Typed Language in Java 7 specification.

25. PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP)
 The reason why LAMP has been so successful over the years is
the huge community of Open Source developers.
 There are thousands of free open source applications which suits
almost any need.
 Applications like Joomla, Drupal for Content Management
system, Wordpress for blog, etc.
 Not only that. Even after being an open platform it is stable as it is
years in the making and there are millions of developers to
support it.
 However, being an open platform, you will have to
take care of security vulnerabilities.

26. PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP)
 All and all, this is the most matured platform for web
(Client/Server) development.
 Every major technology in web development like URL
routing, HTTP compressions, ETag caching etc; are first
implemented on LAMP and later ported to other platforms like
JAVA and .NET/MONO.

27. References
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_%28programming_language%29
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_%28programming_language%29
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaServer_Pages
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP
 http://qt.nokia.com/
 http://www.gtk.org/
 http://php.net/
 http://www.asp.net/
 http://www.asp.net/web-pages
 http://www.asp.net/mvc
 http://mono-project.com
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29
 http://www.mono-project.com/GtkSharpBeginnersGuide
 http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/DynTypeLang/
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd233052.aspx