Re: is C necessarily faster than C++

tbrannon <tbrannon@mars.mars.eecs.lehigh.edu> wrote:
>This guy in my lab keeps refusing to use C++ in our program intended
>to simulate somatosensory neural circuits because he says it is slower
>than C. My (uninformed) response was that most of what you see as
>overhead (ie, message routing, value accessing, type checking) is
>optimized away at compile-time.
>
>Any pointers to more empirical studies?


If you know exactly what you are doing, C++ needs to be no slower than
C. However, it is very easy in C++ to write programs that have hidden
overhead (redundant copies of larger arrays, unexpected use of virtual
functions rather than direct calls, unexpected inhibition of inlining
and other optimizations, etc.). Identifying that you are wasting
time on something like that and tracking the source can be a bit of
effort, and less experienced programmers in your group may not even
know what's happening.


Thomas.
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