Java > Scala

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, December 03, 2011 10:55:22 Walter Bright wrote:
> On 12/3/2011 1:19 AM, Somedude wrote:
> > So maybe they can hope to reach LuaJIT speed in the near future, but
> > before reaching C speed, I suppose there is a long way to go.
> 
> About 7-8 years ago, I attended a conference where a Java guru made a nice
> presentation about how Java was unfairly characterized as slow, and that
> improved JIT technology had solved the speed problems.
> 
> But he also said that closing the performance gap with C was 10 years out,
> and laughingly said it would likely always be 10 years out :-)

I think that what it comes down to is that Java used to be a lot slower than 
it is now but is now plenty fast for a lot of stuff, and that original 
reputation for slowness has stuck on some level. In some cases, Java will be 
as fast as C. In many cases it will not. But it really isn't particularly slow 
for a lot of what it's used for. So, it really does have an unfair rap at this 
point for being slow. It really isn't. However, it will never match C for 
speed such that anyone looking to get every ounce of speed from their CPU is 
going to find it acceptable.

- Jonathan M Davis