在听StackOverflow播客的时候,经常有人说“真正的程序员”是用C语言编写的,而C语言的速度要快得多,因为它“接近机器”。把前面的断言留到另一篇文章,C有什么特别之处,使它比其他语言更快?或者换句话说:什么能阻止其他语言编译成二进制代码,使其运行速度与C语言一样快?


当前回答

这都是时间和努力的问题。

给予无限的时间和努力:

汇编程序比用C语言编写的程序要快。 C程序将比用c++编写的程序更快。

固定的:给定一定的时间和努力:

c++程序比用C编写的程序要快。 C语言的程序比用汇编语言编写的程序要快。

为什么?因为你做的抽象越多,你就可以花更多的时间来优化真正重要的代码关键部分。这里的几个假设是,一个开发人员对这三种语言都有同样的能力,你不关心二进制大小、内存使用情况等。

每种抽象都有其成本效益,但应该使代码更容易、更快地编写。

其他回答

C的设计者们已经做出了取舍。也就是说,他们决定把速度放在安全之上。C不会

检查数组下标边界 检查未初始化的变量值 检查内存泄漏 检查空指针解引用

当你索引到一个数组时,在Java中,它接受虚拟机中的一些方法调用,绑定检查和其他健全检查。这是有效的,绝对没问题,因为它在应有的地方增加了安全性。但是在C语言中,即使是非常微不足道的东西也不会被放在安全的地方。例如,C不要求memcpy检查要复制的区域是否重叠。它并不是一种用于编写大型商业应用程序的语言。

但是这些设计决策并不是C语言中的bug。它们是被设计出来的,因为它允许编译器和库编写者从计算机中获得每一点性能。下面是C语言的精神——C语言的基本原理文档是这样解释的:

C code can be non-portable. Although it strove to give programmers the opportunity to write truly portable programs, the Committee did not want to force programmers into writing portably, to preclude the use of C as a ``high-level assembler'': the ability to write machine-specific code is one of the strengths of C. Keep the spirit of C. The Committee kept as a major goal to preserve the traditional spirit of C. There are many facets of the spirit of C, but the essence is a community sentiment of the underlying principles upon which the C language is based. Some of the facets of the spirit of C can be summarized in phrases like Trust the programmer. Don't prevent the programmer from doing what needs to be done. Keep the language small and simple. Provide only one way to do an operation. Make it fast, even if it is not guaranteed to be portable. The last proverb needs a little explanation. The potential for efficient code generation is one of the most important strengths of C. To help ensure that no code explosion occurs for what appears to be a very simple operation, many operations are defined to be how the target machine's hardware does it rather than by a general abstract rule. An example of this willingness to live with what the machine does can be seen in the rules that govern the widening of char objects for use in expressions: whether the values of char objects widen to signed or unsigned quantities typically depends on which byte operation is more efficient on the target machine.

这实际上是一个长期存在的谎言。虽然C程序确实经常更快,但情况并非总是如此,特别是当C程序员不太擅长它的时候。

人们往往会忘记的一个明显的漏洞是,当程序必须为某种IO阻塞时,比如任何GUI程序中的用户输入。在这些情况下,使用什么语言并不重要,因为您受到数据传入速度的限制,而不是处理数据的速度。在这种情况下,不管你使用的是C、Java、c#甚至Perl;你不能比数据进入的速度更快。

The other major thing is that using garbage collection and not using proper pointers allows the virtual machine to make a number of optimizations not available in other languages. For instance, the JVM is capable of moving objects around on the heap to defragment it. This makes future allocations much faster since the next index can simply be used rather than looking it up in a table. Modern JVMs also don't have to actually deallocate memory; instead, they just move the live objects around when they GC and the spent memory from the dead objects is recovered essentially for free.

This also brings up an interesting point about C and even more so in C++. There is something of a design philosophy of "If you don't need it, you don't pay for it." The problem is that if you do want it, you end up paying through the nose for it. For instance, the vtable implementation in Java tends to be a lot better than C++ implementations, so virtual function calls are a lot faster. On the other hand, you have no choice but to use virtual functions in Java and they still cost something, but in programs that use a lot of virtual functions, the reduced cost adds up.

里面有很多问题——大部分是我没有资格回答的问题。但对于最后一个:

有什么能阻止其他语言编译成运行速度和C一样快的二进制呢?

一句话,抽象。

C语言只比机器语言高出一到两个抽象层次。Java和. net语言距离汇编程序至少有3个抽象级别。Python和Ruby我不太确定。

通常,程序员的玩具越多(复杂的数据类型等),你离机器语言的距离就越远,需要做的翻译就越多。

我在这里和那里都偏离了,但这是基本的要点。

更新-------这篇文章有一些很好的评论,有更多的细节。

实际上,在某些应用程序(数字)中,甚至C也可以被击败,我指的不是汇编语言,而是老的、经常被嘲笑的Fortran。原因是,Fortran保证没有指针别名。

只需在您的IDE中逐步检查机器代码,您就会看到为什么它更快(如果它更快的话)。它省去了很多手把手的环节。很有可能你的Cxx也会被告知不要使用,在这种情况下,它应该是相同的。

编译器优化被高估了,就像几乎所有关于语言速度的看法一样。

优化生成的代码只会对热点代码产生影响,也就是说,没有函数调用(显式或隐式)的紧凑算法。在其他地方,收效甚微。