All Questions
53 questions
107votes
4answers
73kviews
How is a Java reference different from a C pointer?
C has pointers and Java has what is called references. They have some things in common in the sense that they all point to something. I know that pointers in C store the addresses they point to. Do ...
- 2,075
92votes
16answers
21kviews
Do the young minds need to learn the pointer concepts?
Why did the C master Dennis Ritchie introduce pointers in C? And why did the other programming languages like VB.NET or Java or C# eliminate them? I have found some points in Google, and I want to ...
68votes
10answers
21kviews
Why do languages require parenthesis around expressions when used with "if" and "while"?
Languages like C, Java, and C++ all require parenthesis around an entire expression when used in an if, while, or switch. if (true) { // Do something } as opposed to if true { // Do ...
- 773
43votes
3answers
17kviews
Why is the logical NOT operator in C-style languages "!" and not "~~"?
For binary operators we have both bitwise and logical operators: & bitwise AND | bitwise OR && logical AND || logical OR NOT (a unary operator) behaves differently though. There is ~ for ...
- 18.6k
38votes
8answers
16kviews
Why exactly does Java not allow numeric conditionals like if(5) { ...} if C does?
I have these two little programs: C #include <stdio.h> int main() { if (5) { printf("true\n"); } else { printf("false\n"); } return 0; } Java class ...
- 856
36votes
17answers
23kviews
How can I feel more confident about my programming skills? [closed]
Programming isn't alien to me. I first starting doing markup (HTML, now please don't laugh at me) when I was 12 and a little bit of BASIC when I was 13 (I knew much about Flowcharts, Pseudocodes at ...
30votes
9answers
25kviews
Why was Scala not implemented with C or C++
Does anybody know why was Scala implemented in Java and .NET instead of C or C++? Most languages are implemented with Cor C++ [i.e Erlang, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl]. What are the advantages for Scala ...
- 3,905
27votes
6answers
27kviews
How to solve the problem of nested comments
It appears in not just one language that comments can't be nested. Do you have a good solution for this problem? One workaround in C/C++ and Java is to only use the single-line comment but it becomes ...
- 8,158
26votes
2answers
5kviews
Why does Java not put the filename in args?
In C and C++, the main method holds the filename in the first position of the array at argv[0]. In Java, however, the filename is not included in the args string array. Is there a practical reason ...
- 363
23votes
4answers
6kviews
How bad is it calling println() often than concatenating strings together and calling it once?
I know output to the console is a costly operation. In the interest of code readability sometimes it is nice to call a function to output text twice, rather than having a long string of text as an ...
- 595
22votes
11answers
3kviews
Does low latency code sometimes have to be "ugly"?
(This is mainly aimed at those who have specific knowledge of low latency systems, to avoid people just answering with unsubstantiated opinions). Do you feel there is a trade-off between writing "...
- 1,479
19votes
7answers
6kviews
Does modular programming affect computation time?
Everyone says that I should make my code modular, but isn't it less efficient if I use more method calls rather than fewer, but larger, methods? What is the difference in Java, C, or C++ for that ...
- 299
18votes
5answers
8kviews
Undefined behaviour in Java
I was reading this question on SO which discusses some common undefined behavior in C++, and I wondered: does Java also have undefined behaviour? If that is the case, then what are some common causes ...
- 325
17votes
2answers
4kviews
Java has the JVM, what does C have?
I know that C has a compiler but what determines execution performance? For example in an if else block, what if the code just had all ifs instead of if elses, what determines that all the ifs will ...
- 319
11votes
8answers
2kviews
What stops C from being compiled/interpreted/JIT'ed?
Java is often praised for its amazing portability, which I presume is because of the JVM. My question is what stops C from being being compiled/interpreted/JIT'ed.., if so, C can also be write once ...
- 223
