StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Languages
  4. Languages
  5. C vs C++

C vs C++

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

C++
C++
Stacks18.2K
Followers9.4K
Votes866
C lang
C lang
Stacks14.9K
Followers4.2K
Votes253

C vs C++: What are the differences?

What is C? One of the most widely used programming languages of all time. .

What is C++? Has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing the facilities for low level memory manipulation. C++ compiles directly to a machine's native code, allowing it to be one of the fastest languages in the world, if optimized.

C and C++ can be primarily classified as "Languages" tools.

"Performance" is the primary reason why developers consider C over the competitors, whereas "Performance" was stated as the key factor in picking C++.

According to the StackShare community, C++ has a broader approval, being mentioned in 199 company stacks & 371 developers stacks; compared to C, which is listed in 64 company stacks and 251 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on C++, C lang

Alexandre
Alexandre

Founder & Developper at Finance D

Jul 1, 2021

Decided

I had a goal to create the simplest accounting software for Mac and Windows to help small businesses in Canada.

This led me to a long 2 years of exploration of the best language that could provide these features:

  • Great overall productivity
  • International wide-spread usage for long-term sustainability and easy to find documentation
  • Versatility for creating websites and desktop softwares
  • Enjoyable developper experience
  • Ability to create good looking modern UIs
  • Job openings with this language

I tried Python, Java, C# and C++ without finding what I was looking for.

When I discovered Javascript, I really knew it was the right language to use. Thinking of this today makes me realize even more how great a decision this has been to learn, use and master Javascript. It has been a fun, challenging and productive road on which I am still satisfied.

Obviously, when I refer to Javascript, it is not without implying the vast ecosystem around it. For me, JS is a whole universe in which almost every imaginable tools exist. It's awesome - for real. Thanks to all the contributors which have made it possible.

To be even clearer about how intense I am with Javascript, let's just say that my first passion was music. Until, I find coding with Javascript! Yep, I know!

So in conclusion, I chose Javascript because it is versatile, enjoyable, widely used, productive for both desktop softwares and websites with ability to create modern great looking user interfaces (assuming HTML and CSS are involved) and finally there are job openings.

399k views399k
Comments
Rachel
Rachel

Nov 24, 2020

Needs adviceonJavaScriptJavaScriptPythonPythonC++C++

Hi, I'm just starting to learn code, and I stumbled upon this website. I think I should learn JavaScript, Python, and C++ to begin with. I'm a quick learner so I am only worried about what would be more useful. Suppose my goal is to build an online clothing store or something. Then what languages would be best? I need advice. Please help me out. I'm 13 and just beginning and it's hard to understand when people use technical terms so please keep it simple. Thanks a lot.

292k views292k
Comments
Satoshi
Satoshi

Mar 14, 2022

Needs adviceonC++C++C#C#.NET.NET

Actually, I'll add, C++ and C# as well.

Well, I'm into Computer Science since 1996, so I understand a bit of everything plus a lot of different OSs, I study 10 hours per day every day. However back in the 90s we didn't have books or universities about programming, all were passed through if you knew somebody in that profession. Which I did and in that time, he showed me .NET and MySQL, and that offered a lot of jobs also Java. Today you have a lot of options but I'm already discarding new languages as I believe they will jot succeed.

My always dream was to create game, and software. I don't understand all programming concepts and I'm studying all languages at the same time, so I'm heavy loaded. But that keeps me more aware.

I made a choice: use Python for everything but if you want performance, apps, security, compatibility, Multiplatform. What should I choose? The real question here is: which language should I go 100% and that language will teach me all I need about programming BUT without getting lost in that language forever (I discard any Assembly possibility) and one that has full documentation, support and libraries.

In my experience: I found a lot of info for python and java. But hardly I have ever found anything for C lang, C++ and, what about C# (it's only for Windows, is it easy, I saw a lot of documentation). Thanks!!

132k views132k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

C++
C++
C lang
C lang

C++ compiles directly to a machine's native code, allowing it to be one of the fastest languages in the world, if optimized.

No description available.

Statistics
Stacks
18.2K
Stacks
14.9K
Followers
9.4K
Followers
4.2K
Votes
866
Votes
253
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 205
    Performance
  • 108
    Control over memory allocation
  • 99
    Cross-platform
  • 98
    Fast
  • 85
    Object oriented
Cons
  • 8
    Unsafe
  • 8
    Slow compilation
  • 6
    Fragile ABI
  • 6
    Over-complicated
  • 5
    No standard/mainstream dependency management
Pros
  • 69
    Performance
  • 49
    Low-level
  • 36
    Portability
  • 29
    Hardware level
  • 19
    Embedded apps
Cons
  • 5
    Low-level
  • 3
    Lack of type safety
  • 3
    No built in support for concurrency
  • 3
    No built in support for parallelism (e.g. map-reduce)

What are some alternatives to C++, C lang?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase