>> I'm not even sure what it means when they say that "C++ is 27% slower". <<
It means the author mis-read "how many times slower, ..., compared to the fastest programs."
Compared to the fastest programs, not compared to the C programs.
Compared to C programs, and Ada programs, and C++ programs, and JavaScript programs, and Fortran programs... that were faster.
I haven't looked at the benchmark, but I'd assume that the comparison is supposed to be "idiomatic C" vs "idiomatic C++".
Re:Why code in C anymore?
by adamnemecek on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @12:32AM
(#5290867)
Possibly, but as they present it, it makes it seems as if there was something inherent that would make it so much slower.
Well, for a long time the STL string class had poor performance. Idiomatic C++ would use the STL string class. Therefore idiomatic C++ would suffer a performance penalty.
Re:Why code in C anymore?
by ternaryoperator on Wednesday February 27, 2013 @06:53PM
(#5295932)
27% slower = what one program does in 1 unit of time, another program requires 1.27 units to do.
I don't know how they can make this conclusion. I'm not even sure what it means when they say that "C++ is 27% slower". In the C benchmarking code, they hand roll a lot of the data structures whereas in the C++ code, they include either the standard library or boost. So it's not really a comparison of C vs C++ is it. There is nothing about C++ that would make that big of a difference.