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C vs Java

Difference Between C vs Java

C: Almost all of us know who Dennis M. Ritchie is. Yes, C was developed by him between 1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs and it was used to re-implement the UNIX operating systems. Do you know the project name where C was developed? It’s Multics.

Java: James Gosling is the developer of Java. It was developed at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a component of Sun Microsystems. Initially, it was called Oak after an Oak tree that was outside Gosling’s office. Then it was changed to Green and finally, it was renamed to Java.

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Head to Head Comparison Between C and Java (Infographics)

Below are the top 13 comparison between C and Java:

C vs Java Infographics

Key Differences Between C and Java

The key difference between C and Java are explained in the below-mentioned points:

  1. The main key difference between C and Java is the programming paradigm which tells us that C is procedure oriented and Java is data oriented.
  2. C does not support the OOPs concept whereas its counterpart supports OOPs. Thus Java suited when one has to relate the things according to the real world.
  3. Memory management is also an important aspect which is to be considered because in Java do not allow to access any memory which it internally manages and thus it is easy to focus on developing the business logic.
  4. Exception handling is one the powerful mechanism in Java which allows maintaining the normal flow of the program in a case of any abnormalities which we cannot achieve directly in C.
  5. Portability is also a factor when we compare languages. When income to Java it wins the race in terms of portability.
  6. C also does not supports the concept of threading which is also a big advantage in Java. In today’s day to day environment threading is a big plus point which allows us to do simultaneous do our work and with that, we can also save time.

C and Java Comparison Table

Below is the list of points describe the comparison between C and Java.

Basis Of Comparison Between  C vs Java C JAVA
Language Type   Procedural Programming
Language.

  • Let me explain a bit about Procedural Programming Language. A procedural programming language is a type of computer language that specifies a series of well-structured steps and procedures within a programming context to compose a program.
  • It is a compiled language.
  • C is a middle-level language because it actually binds the gap between machine level language and high-level languages. One can use C for system programming as well as Application programming.
  • Since we already know that C does not supports OOPs so it lags the property called Inheritance which is very useful in case of code reusability.
 Object-Oriented Programming Language.

  • Object-oriented Programming language (OOP) is a type of programming language in which we define not only data type of a data structure but also the types of operations that can be applied.
  • The four basics of OOP are Inheritance, Abstraction, Polymorphism, and Encapsulation.
  • It is an interpreted language.
  • Java is a high-level language because it must be translated into machine language using compiler or interpreter.
  • Due to support for Inheritance code reusability is possible in Java.
Programming Paradigms (pattern/models)
  • It breaks down to functions.
  • It is more procedure oriented.
  • It breaks down to Objects.
  • It is more data-oriented.
Approach  Follows a top-down
approach.
It means it gives much importance to the flow of the program rather than on data on which it operates.		 Follows bottom-up
approach.
Preprocessors It supports.                                                C Predecessor is a macro processor that is used automatically by the C compiler to transform the before program actual compilation.                It is the preprocessor who provides the ability of inclusion of header files, macro expansions, conditional compilation and few other things. It does not support.
Memory
Management
  • User-based memory management.
  •  It supports the use of pointers.
  • Pointers is a programming language object whose value refers to another value stored somewhere in computer memory. It is used to store and manage the address of a dynamically allocated block of memory.
  • It internally manages the memory.
  •  It does not support the use of pointers.
Portability    It is not portable thus it is platform dependent. It is portable thus it is platform independent. But we have to keep in mind that we have to install JDK which provides JVM and due to it,
it is platform independent.
Object
Management		 In Cone has to manage it manually. In Java, it is automatically managed by a garbage collector.
Thread  It does not support Threads It supports Threads.
Memory
Allocation
  • Memory allocation can be done by malloc.
  •  For freeing the memory one has to use free.
  • Memory allocation can be done by a new keyword.
  •  A compiler will do it internally by calling the garbage collector.
Exception
Handling		 C does not provide a direct mechanism for handling exceptions.
errno.h is a header file in the standard library of the C programming language. It defines macros for reporting and retrieving error
conditions through error
codes stored in a static memory location called error number.		 Exception Handling mechanism is available in java for handling error so that the normal flow of the program can be maintained
Overloading C does not support overloading functionality at all. Java supports method overloading. Overloading is very useful in code readability.
Calling Functionality It supports call by value and call by reference. It only supports a call by value.
Variable Declaration Declaration of variables should be at the beginning of the block. We can declare variables anywhere though it is a good practice to declare the variables at the beginning of the block.

Conclusion

So from the above discussion, we came to the conclusion that C vs Java both are two different programming languages. Java is the most popular language at the industry level for the development of web applications as well as mobile applications.

But we can’t deny the fact that C being the oldest one is also a very popular language. Everything from a microcontroller to operating systems is written in C due to its flexibility and versatility, allowing maximum control with minimum commands.

Both C vs Java programming language holds their own position in different aspect so there are always points where we can compare but cannot replace each other.

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