Secure Coding mailing list archives
re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet]
From: dcrocker at eschertech.com (David Crocker)
Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 12:17:01 -0000
mikeiscool wrote:
Don't go there, sister. Come up with some reasonable tests before making a statement like that. "Assembly code can be as much as a million times faster then the run time of a C++ version of the same algorithm." Bit useless, isn't it? << I would not have made the statement I did had the tests not been done and provided very clear results. I am not at liberty to go into details of the tests I have been involved with, however if you Google for e.g. "C++ C# performance", you will see that other people are getting similar results.
Lets not forget that writing faster/more optimised code in c++ will be more complex and hence allow room for more errors then letting the c#/java runtime optimiser do the dirty work for us. << C++ offers much more room for errors than C# or Java, and not just in memory management. If you re-read my comment, you will realise that I was not promoting C++ as being a better language than C#, just pointing out that there are some situations in which the replacement of C++ by C# is not yet feasible, such as where a performance reduction of around 30% to 50% cannot be accepted. It is to be hoped that as JIT compiler technology continues to improve, the performance gap will be further reduced. David Crocker, Escher Technologies Ltd. Consultancy, contracting and tools for dependable software development www.eschertech.com -----Original Message----- From: mikeiscool [mailto:michaelslists at gmail.com] Sent: 05 November 2006 02:19 To: David Crocker Cc: Secure Coding Subject: Re: [SC-L] re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] On 10/28/06, David Crocker <dcrocker at eschertech.com> wrote:
Crispin Cowan wrote:For me, the enemy in the room is C++. It gives you the safety of C with the performance of SmallTalk. There is no excuse at all to be writing anything in C++ yet vastly too many applications are written in C++ anyway. C++ Instead of trying to coax developers to switch from C++ to something "weird" like SML, lets encourage them to switch to Java or C#, which are closer to their experience. << Unfortunately, there are at least two situations in which C++ is a more suitable alternative to Java and C#: - Where performance is critical. Run time of C# code (using the faster .NET 2.0 runtime) can be as much as double the run time of a C++ version of the same algorithm. Try telling a large company that it must double the size of its compute farms so you can switch to a "better" programming language!
Don't go there, sister. Come up with some reasonable tests before making a statement like that. "Assembly code can be as much as a million times faster then the run time of a C++ version of the same algorithm." Bit useless, isn't it? Lets not forget that writing faster/more optimised code in c++ will be more complex and hence allow room for more errors then letting the c#/java runtime optimiser do the dirty work for us.
However, I suspect that most security-critical programs do not fall into either of these categories,
What? Cryptography rings a bell ...
so C# or Java would indeed be a better choice than C++ for those programs. David Crocker, Escher Technologies Ltd. Consultancy, contracting and tools for dependable software development www.eschertech.com
-- mic
Current thread:
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm..., (continued)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... Gadi Evron (Nov 05)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... Wall, Kevin (Nov 06)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... pete werner (Nov 06)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... Paul Powenski (Nov 06)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... Leichter, Jerry (Nov 06)
- re-writing college books - erm.. ahm... Gunnar Peterson (Oct 30)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] David Crocker (Oct 28)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] Crispin Cowan (Nov 02)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] David Crocker (Nov 04)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] mikeiscool (Nov 04)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] David Crocker (Nov 05)
- re-writing college books [was: Re: A banner year for software bugs | Tech News on ZDNet] mikeiscool (Nov 05)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] SZALAY Attila (Nov 05)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] mikeiscool (Nov 06)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] SZALAY Attila (Nov 08)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] mikeiscool (Nov 08)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] SZALAY Attila (Nov 09)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] ljknews (Nov 09)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] SZALAY Attila (Nov 09)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] ljknews (Nov 09)
- Could I use Java or c#? [was: Re: re-writing college books] Crispin Cowan (Nov 09)