C vs Java

Overview

Java

Stacks148.0K

Followers105.5K

Votes3.7K

C lang

Stacks14.9K

Followers4.2K

Votes253

C vs Java: What are the differences?

C is a low-level programming language known for its efficiency and close-to-hardware control, while Java is a high-level programming language that emphasizes portability and ease of use. Here are the key differences between C and Java:

Syntax and Level of Abstraction: C is a procedural programming language with a simple syntax that focuses on low-level system programming. It provides direct access to memory and hardware resources. On the other hand, Java is an object-oriented programming language with a more expressive and high-level syntax. It abstracts away low-level details and provides a rich set of libraries and frameworks for building complex applications.
Memory Management: In C, developers have manual memory management control and need to explicitly allocate and deallocate memory. This allows for efficient memory usage but requires careful handling to avoid memory leaks and segmentation faults. Java, on the other hand, employs automatic memory management through its garbage collection mechanism.
Portability and Platform Independence: C code is typically compiled into machine-specific executable binaries, making it highly platform-dependent. Code written in C may need to be recompiled or modified to run on different operating systems or hardware architectures. In contrast, Java code is compiled into bytecode that can run on any platform with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This gives Java the advantage of platform independence, allowing Java applications to run on various platforms without modification.
Performance and Execution Speed: C is known for its fast and efficient execution speed, thanks to direct memory and hardware access. It excels in applications requiring low-level control and high performance. Java, as a higher-level language, offers convenience features like automatic memory management, but it may have slightly lower performance due to added overhead.
Application Domain and Use Cases: C is widely used in system programming, embedded systems, operating systems, and areas where direct control over hardware resources is essential. It is commonly used for developing device drivers, kernels, and performance-critical applications. Java, on the other hand, is popular in enterprise software development, web applications, mobile development (Android), and large-scale distributed systems. Its rich ecosystem, extensive libraries, and platform independence make it suitable for building diverse applications.

In summary, If you need low-level control, direct hardware access, and high performance, C may be a suitable choice. If you prioritize platform independence, a rich ecosystem, and ease of development, Java would be a better fit.

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Advice on Java, C lang

Erik

Chief Architect at LiveTiles

May 18, 2020

Decided

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

614k views614k

Comments

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Ido

Mar 6, 2020

Decided

When developing a new blockchain, we as a team chose Go lang over Java and other candidates, due to Go being (a) natively suited to concurrency - there are primitives in the language itself (goroutines, channels) that really help with reasoning about concurrency (b) super fast - build time, running, testing are all much faster that Java, this gives a far superior developer experience (c) shorter and stricter than Java - code is much shorter (less verbose), and there is usually one good way to do things, and even the code formatter that is bundled with Go is very opinionated - over a short time this makes reading other people's code far smoother than having to deal with different styles.

You should be aware that Go presently (v1.13) lacks Generics.

267k views267k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Java	C lang
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!	No description available.
Statistics
Stacks 148.0K	Stacks 14.9K
Followers 105.5K	Followers 4.2K
Votes 3.7K	Votes 253
Pros & Cons
Pros 608 Great libraries 446 Widely used 401 Excellent tooling 396 Huge amount of documentation available 334 Large pool of developers available Cons 33 Verbosity 27 NullpointerException 17 Nightmare to Write 16 Overcomplexity is praised in community culture 12 Boiler plate code	Pros 69 Performance 49 Low-level 36 Portability 29 Hardware level 19 Embedded apps Cons 5 Low-level 3 No built in support for parallelism (e.g. map-reduce) 3 Lack of type safety 3 No built in support for concurrency
Integrations
Spring	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Java, C lang?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Swift

Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.

Related Comparisons

Syntax and Level of Abstraction: C is a procedural programming language with a simple syntax that focuses on low-level system programming. It provides direct access to memory and hardware resources. On the other hand, Java is an object-oriented programming language with a more expressive and high-level syntax. It abstracts away low-level details and provides a rich set of libraries and frameworks for building complex applications.
Memory Management: In C, developers have manual memory management control and need to explicitly allocate and deallocate memory. This allows for efficient memory usage but requires careful handling to avoid memory leaks and segmentation faults. Java, on the other hand, employs automatic memory management through its garbage collection mechanism.
Portability and Platform Independence: C code is typically compiled into machine-specific executable binaries, making it highly platform-dependent. Code written in C may need to be recompiled or modified to run on different operating systems or hardware architectures. In contrast, Java code is compiled into bytecode that can run on any platform with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This gives Java the advantage of platform independence, allowing Java applications to run on various platforms without modification.
Performance and Execution Speed: C is known for its fast and efficient execution speed, thanks to direct memory and hardware access. It excels in applications requiring low-level control and high performance. Java, as a higher-level language, offers convenience features like automatic memory management, but it may have slightly lower performance due to added overhead.
Application Domain and Use Cases: C is widely used in system programming, embedded systems, operating systems, and areas where direct control over hardware resources is essential. It is commonly used for developing device drivers, kernels, and performance-critical applications. Java, on the other hand, is popular in enterprise software development, web applications, mobile development (Android), and large-scale distributed systems. Its rich ecosystem, extensive libraries, and platform independence make it suitable for building diverse applications.

C vs Java