An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl for a search/string-processing program

80 implementations of the same set of requirements, created
by 74
different programmers in various languages, are compared
for several
properties, such as run time, memory consumption, source
text length,
comment density, program structure, reliability, and the
amount of
effort required for writing them.
The results indicate that, for the given programming
problem,
``scripting languages'' (Perl, Python, Rexx, Tcl) are more
productive
than conventional languages. In terms of run time and
memory
consumption, they often turn out better than Java and not
much worse than
C or C++. In general, the differences between languages
tend to be
smaller than the typical differences due to different
programmers within
the same language.