Perl vs. C: Comparing Scripting Languages and Structured Languages for Application Development

Abstract

My goal was to try and develop the same application using two different languages and then compare the end products and the ease and speed of the development process while constructing each version. Once I had completed the C version, I had two versions of MyDGIT that performed virtually the exact same tasks with very few differences in how these tasks were executed. Side by side, it was difficult to tell which was which. However, a few informal benchmark tests on multiple computers showed that the C version ran remarkably faster and used less memory to execute the same actions on the same sets of data. To its credit, the Perl version was still very fast and could have been adequate for everyday use if some time had been spent to try and streamline certain areas. This left me to put increased importance on which language was more appropriate based on the successes and failures during the development and which language would help expand MyDGIT's abilities in the future. Despite some of the challenges that I had described in the previous section, my choice is c.