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When you write Java in a C like syntax : "Chronicle's system is built in what Lawrey describes as "C-like Java" and it's this that he encourages people to code low latency systems in." I guess very limited number of constructors, and most of all the methods are static. And they still struggle to find programmers that can code that way.
As an HFT programmer I like this article because it means less competition for me. I mean, you can write a very fast system in Java but by the time you accomplish that goal you’ll have spent as much or more time than if you had just used C++.
While I might not agree with the conclusion of the OP, the performance of a programming language should be always paired with its "average" programmers. A lot of people tend to straw-man a language they dislike and iron-man (?) a language they like. For an average programmer, I think it might be possible that Java produces a more performant/maintainable code than C++.
This is very true. I've seen colleagues port Python to C++ and wonder why it's slower. Of course Python is slow, but it will call into efficient C routines for a lot of things that aren't just available out of the box in C++. So what does the average programmer do? They implement their own, inefficient version of this in C++. Now you've saved the overhead of copying your data from the Python to the C-world and back,…
Going from a statically typed language to using python to do number crunching genuinely makes me want to vomit. I don't understand how people convince themselves that it's productive to write so many tests and (say) check types at runtime etc.
I actually love Python's syntax but the language design seems like it was thrown together over a weekend.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Avoiding allocations is the key part: "...we avoid all the garbage". I found the same is true when trying to write high performance Java UI code for Android. If you have to do something complex each frame, make sure to pre allocate or pool your objects. If the hot parts of the code are written in a C-like style, then the JIT and other optimizations can give you C-like performance. You'll still need to write C code if…
>"but writing in C-like Java can give you C performance while still letting you interact with Java libraries & APIs." Assuming those libraries do not do allocations of their own negating all the efforts.
I used to work on a high-speed messaging system built in Java, and garbage collection was a killer. No matter how much we tweaked the code and the GC parameters, and this eventually got escalated pretty high up in Sun itself, we'd get these occasional multi- minute pauses where the whole thing would just freeze up, buffers would fill and stuff would start dropping on the floor. This was over 10 years ago, so things m…
As an HFT programmer I like this article because it means less competition for me. I mean, you can write a very fast system in Java but by the time you accomplish that goal you’ll have spent as much or more time than if you had just used C++.
Do you think it’d be even faster if you used C?
But otherwise they’re probably the same.
Maybe the JVM's GC is just so much faster that it's worth it?
When you write Java in a C like syntax : "Chronicle's system is built in what Lawrey describes as "C-like Java" and it's this that he encourages people to code low latency systems in." I guess very limited number of constructors, and most of all the methods are static. And they still struggle to find programmers that can code that way.
Pre-allocate arrays, avoid collections.
Use LUTs.
Avoid string processing, operate on bits and bytes as much as possible.
Same applies to telecoms-development that has to be fast and predictable.
As an HFT programmer I like this article because it means less competition for me. I mean, you can write a very fast system in Java but by the time you accomplish that goal you’ll have spent as much or more time than if you had just used C++.