A quantitative comparison between C, C++ and Rust : Loading data in the context of a game engine

Abstract: Comparisons of programming languages within a game engine context are rare, and the data that exists usually only compare the most prominent languages of their time. C, C++ and Rust are three comparable languages, with C and C++ being two of the older, but very high performing, languages. Rust is a newer language that focuses lesson pointers and has most of its overhead during compile time, making it a language that can stand up to both C and C++. The intention of this study was to find what language performs the best when loading data in a simulated game engine. This was done by creating three engines in C, C++ and Rust respectively and then running the same set of tests in each of them. The result showed that C performed the fastest, with Rust falling slightly behind. It was also shown that C++ could not keep up with either of them.