C++ or C# in calculations

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Hi,

I'm about to rewrite an old DLL containing several different calculation functions. The old version is done with VC6 and it's quite easily portable to newer formats.

However most of the software using these calculations are written in C#. So from the maintenance point of view it would be best to write them in C#.

I can accept a small performance downgrade but nothing severe. The calculations themselves are not difficult from programming point of view, just basic math operations. But they do contain lots of iterations (>10M).

So I would be interested to hear opinions if I should still stick to C++ or could I consider converting the library to C#. At the moment I feel that the performance wouldn't be an issue because of the nature of the calculations (iterations). JIT compiler should be involved only once and after that the rest of the operations are basically executing the same machine code. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

mika

Posted 25-Mar-11 9:45am

Wendelius

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Albert Holguin 25-Mar-11 21:22pm

I would say... update the code if its required, if you can reuse the code, then why not... C++ isn't going to disappear any time soon...

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AspDotNetDev · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-25T10:01:00

Solution 1

Depends on the usage. If it's a business application in which real time performance is not much of a concern, C# all the way. If it's a video game, then maybe you'll want to consider C++. I usually prefer code that is easy to maintain over code that is highly optimized when the optimization does not significantly improve the user's experience.

Posted 25-Mar-11 10:01am

AspDotNetDev

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Mar-11 16:22pm

It depends, but my vote it 5 :-)
--SA

Wendelius 25-Mar-11 16:40pm

Thanks for the answer! Forgot to mention it but it's a business app and the calculations are not updated in real-time but on the other hand users are not willing to wait for a 'long' time for the results. If you don't mind I'll mark this as accepted a bit later if someone still want's to jump in :)

Wendelius 26-Mar-11 3:44am

Accepted, thanks again.

wizardzz · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-25T10:33:00

How often are the calculations called? Are they one time deals, or do they constantly get kicked off? What is the dll used for, meaning, what kind of software? In general, unless it is a latency sensitive project (trading, graphics intensive), you should be fine performance wise going to C#, at least based on my experience.

From a maintenance perspective is C# better because more developers on your team are familiar with it? If this is the case, how often would the calculations and/or dll need to be modified. If this is often, then the conversion to C# can save you a headache.

I have though, worked on projects where the GUI and form logic is all C#, while the heavy analysis was done through C++. This worked very well for our projects. Is there any other reason to move to C# other than maintainability?

Hans Dietrich · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-25T12:48:00

Solution 3

Another consideration is whether your code is proprietary. If you don't want others to have the source, then maybe you should keep it packaged it in a DLL. If you do that, the language is a non-issue, since no one but you will see it.

Posted 25-Mar-11 12:48pm

Hans Dietrich

Updated 25-Mar-11 12:50pm

v3

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Wendelius 26-Mar-11 3:38am

Thank you! That's a good point. The code is proprietary but it's not part of a product but used only in-house so in this sense the security isn't an issue.

Wendelius 26-Mar-11 3:44am

Accepted.

Anthony Mushrow · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-25T15:40:00

Solution 4

I think one more thing to mention is that unless your c++ code is using SSE to optimise the calculations then it's C# equivalent is likely going to perform the same or with negligible difference.

So I don't think the difference in performance should affect your decision on which language to use, although if it is an issue you could always do a few benchmarks between the two.

Posted 25-Mar-11 15:40pm

Anthony Mushrow

Comments

Wendelius 26-Mar-11 3:43am

Thanks! SSE isn't used. I agree that the performance most likely isn't going be much worse so C# sounds very tempting.

Wendelius 26-Mar-11 3:44am

Accepted.

Emilio Garavaglia · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-25T22:00:00

Solution 5

C++ and C# are different for the way memory is managed.
Primitive number type calculation translate the same, when becoming machine code.

If the problem is efficiency in calculation, the real problem is not the language, but the way the compiler optimize the code respect to the underlying processor.
But this is something dealing with the compiler backed (the machine code generator of the native C++ compiler or the JIT compiler, in case of .net languages) than fronted (syntax and semantics).

Posted 25-Mar-11 22:00pm

Emilio Garavaglia

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Wendelius 26-Mar-11 5:40am

Thanks for the comments. The calculations need to be 'fast' but of course fast is very relative. I'm trying to balance the performance against the maintainability (achieveing more homogenous environment). You're right that if I go to C# I'll have a close look, what kind of programming structures I'll use.

Wendelius 26-Mar-11 5:41am

Accepted.

C++ or C# in calculations

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