splasky / basiccompare

A basic comparitive analysis of C, C++, Rust, and Zig.

BasicCompare

A basic comparitive analysis of C, C++, Rust, Zig, Python, and Java.

Overview

The goal of this project was to test operational time performance for each language using as like operations as possible. Though per-lang optimizations could be performed, the systems-level languages allow for inline assembly. That means this would get real nasty, real quick. The implementation is meant to be a naive, or at least a beginner's basic approach to the problem.

The operations are:

• using a struct to contain a billable user account
• propogated by a language provided random number generator
• over a provided (100 default) number of iterations
• propagate a resizeable heap-based account collection of provided operation size (100 default)
• iterate over the list and perform a billing based on account balance (actual values don't matter)
• perform the iteration loop operation number of times
• clear list/free memory

Although variations obviously change between languages, those operations are performed in much the same manner across. The languages are compiled using optimizations where available. C/C++ uses -O2, Rust uses --release, and Zig uses ReleaseFast. Programs will print to command line the total time of execution. As well as the maximum, minimum, and average per-iteration times.

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Useage

The provided Makefile should build on any machine that has Make/Clang, Rust/Cargo, Zig, and Java. Python .py file to be run via CLI $ python ./python/main.py. Each program allows for up to two numeric arguments, with the first assigning operations, and the second iterations.

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Timings

Raw output on an admittedly cheap laptop running 100 operations over 1000 iterations are as follows:

Language	Execution Time (s)	Max (ns)	Min (ns)	Avg (ns)	C Ratio
C	0.335615	455000	296000	335181	1.00
C++	0.348636	477918	306957	348245	0.96
Rust	0.229681174	368683	201749	229564	1.46
Zig	0.10153	541197	75332	95047	3.30
Python	14.77727734	33754451	12984472	14775610	0.02
Java	0.263353044	7772037	130966	240370	1.27

*note: Python timed via interpreter, your times may vary. Please speak to your doctor or a licensed medical professional before attempting Java. Not to be confused with financial advice. Offer void in Utah.