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Programming
The Slowest Modern Programming Languages
And the reasons as to why they are slow
Programming languages have been out there for decades. Each language is built to satisfy a certain need.
As of today, the world counts about 700 notable programming languages. While about 250 managed to stay afloat, the rest was dumped by the programming community. (Latest data from Wikipedia)
Performance has been always an alarming matter for programmers. While before, execution time could be measured in calendars, nowadays, it is measured in fractions of seconds. Credits go to advancements in electronics.
The speed rate by which computers evolve follows Moore’s law:
In electronics, speed and performance translate to the number of transistors a particular chip can have. The number surprisingly doubles every two years according to Moore’s law. That’s why your hand-sized mobile phone is way faster than a room-sized supercomputer of the 1990s.
When it comes to computer science, there is a difference between a faster code and a faster PC. A slow program and a slow computer.
I bet our friends at Intel and AMD are doing a great job creating powerful computing systems in terms of speed. Creating robust and fast programs is, therefore, up to us.
One of the things to take into account while creating software is language expectations. Each language is implemented differently, so each one delivers on its proper merits. And speed might simply not be among these merits.
Now, if you’re trying to build a program that would carry out demanding tasks such as games and heavy mathematical computations, you’d better steer clear from slow programming languages.
Generally, programming languages are two types:
- Statically-typed programming languages
- Dynamically-typed programming languages
Statically-typed languages are usually compiled, meaning a program called the compiler parses and converts your…
