CODEWITHSUNDEEP
performancecompilation
user615457
user615457

Reputation: 837

What are some compiled programming languages that compile fast?

I think I finally know what I want in a compiled programming language, a fast compiler. I get the feeling that this is a really superficial thing to care about but some time after switching from Java to Scala for a while I realized that being able to make a small change in code and immediately run the program is actually quite important to me. Besides Java and Go I don't know of any languages that really value compile speed.

Upvotes: 10

Views: 2626

Answers (4)

Hyden
Hyden

Reputation: 299

I'd like to add that there official compilers for languages and unofficial ones made by different people. Obviously because of this the performance changes per compiler.

If you were to talk just about the official compiler I'd say it's probably Fortran. It's very old but it's still used in most science and engineering projects because it is one of the fastest languages. C and C++ come probably tied in second because there also used in science and engineering.

Upvotes: 0

Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 96

Delphi/Object Pascal. Make a change, press F9 and it runs - you don't even notice the compile time. A full rebuild of a fairly substantial project that we run takes of the order of 10-20 seconds, even on a fairly wimpy machine

There's an open source variant available at www.freepascal.org. I've not messed with it but it reportedly is just as fast - it's the design of the Pascal language that allows this.

Upvotes: 5

SK-logic
SK-logic

Reputation: 9715

Java is not the fastest compiler out there.

Pascal (and its close relatives) is designed to be fast - it can be compiled in a single pass. Objective Caml is known for its compilation speed (and there is a REPL too).

On the other hand, what you really need is REPL, not a fast recompilation and re-linking of everything. So you may want to try a language which supports an incremental compilation. Clojure fits well (and it is built on top of the same JVM you're used to). Common Lisp is another option.

Upvotes: 2

Udo Held
Udo Held

Reputation: 12538

Java isn't fast for compiling. The feature you a looking for is probably a hot replacement/redeployment while coding. Eclipse recompiles just the files you changed.

You could try some interpreted languages. They usually don't require compiling at all.

I wouldn't choose a language based on compilation speed...

Upvotes: 0

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