C++ Creator Confident About Its Future

bonch writes "Bjarne Stroustrup is confident about the future of C++. He says there is a backlash against new languages like Java and C#, and that developers are returning to C++." From the article: "He claimed the main reason why people are not aware of this is because C++ doesn't have a 'propaganda campaign.' Sun Microsystems has touted the use of Java in the Mars Rover program, for example, but Stroustrup asserts that C++ was also used.

Comments

Some backlash in academics as well..

[BigZaphod]

When I was in college for my CS degree, the focus shift away from C/C++ and towards Java was beginning. I was lucky in that my early CS programs were still in C++. However, the classes right behind me as I moved through were getting shifted over to Java one by one. I did not like that at all. It just felt wrong. I figured maybe I was just being biased since I learned C/C++ pretty much on my own without the aid of classes.

After graduating with my BS in CS, I was out in the field for a few years. I spent some time at a C++ Windows shop which was trying to become gung-ho about C# and the various .NET technologies. The magazines all had big pushes for Java, C#, VB.NET, etc.

I left that place and moved into a contracting position where I help admin a data center. The attitude there is much different, to say the least. :-) Everyday we have to deal with huge bloated Java web applications that melt CPUs, eat RAM, and are so slow it takes boxes with 11 CPUs just to service a few thousand customers. The distaste for Java that begins in our department has been filtering up the layers and is starting to become apparent to some of the people who build these projects. When you line up a huge app in PHP next to one written in Java, why is it that the PHP one can easily outperform it on less hardware and require less people to maintain it? That all translates to big $$$$ not to mention application stability and performance.

I'm also now studying for a master's degree in CS. Since I had been away a few years, I was not surprised when I came back to see Java everywhere in the undergrad classes (this at a different school than before). What did surprise me is the attitude of one of my new professors. He taught a projects class where the whole point of the class is to build/do something by the end of the term. It doesn't matter what as long as it fit the basic subject area of the class. After that, you're pretty much on your own (or in a group, if you want). Since this was a different school than where I got my BS, I didn't know this professor. I had seen him wearing a Java shirt a few times, so I was prepared to have to deal with some friction when I went to suggest that I wanted to do my project with C++. One day I stayed after class to chat with him and get to know him a bit. I was shocked to discover that he had done a lot of postdoctoral research using Java and about Java and found it lacking in many very important areas (specifically in high performance scientific computing applications). As we were walking out of the building, he was asking me about my background in programming and computers, so I was giving him a mini life story sort of thing. I mentioned my C/C++ upbringing and how in my college days the Java shift had begun and I didn't quite feel comfortable with that and how I see it seemed to have happened everywhere. That's when he took a careful look around the hallway, leaned in, and said in a hushed tone, "Switching to Java for the undergrads is the worst decision this department ever made."

I was pretty stunned to hear that from a professor considering what was going on just a few years previous. I hope that sentiment grows and CS departments take back their programs from corporate interests and marketing machines. Perhaps there is hope...

Id rather

[MemoryDragon]

See objective C with GnuStep as base for the next gen C based frameworks and low level languages, than having that monster without decent classlib C++ rising again.

Sorry, been there, done that, but the widespread usage of C++ was one of the biggest history jokes ever. A language, as bloated as a language could be, with lots of cool features on the language level, but ommitting the two most important aspects, a good standardized classlib which covers all important application scope aspects, and a language which is actually usable without having to fight with it for years before being able to master it to a certain degree. There was a reason why people flooded to java in 97-98, it was less the hype, it was more the fact, that people tried to implement big long running systems in C++ and saw it was not really feasable in a decent timeframe, due to constantly crashing problems thanks to the missing boundary checks, memory leaks thanks to the missing garbage collector, and general programming errors and unreadable code, thanks to the byzantine bloatware the language in fact really is. Add to that the compiler bugs caused by the 1200 pages of language specs and you could see why people were fleeing from C++.

And up to date, whenever I have to talk about C++ I only can give the advice, limit yourself in the usage of features and only use a readable subset of it (which would be similar to java and C#), try to omit the C heritage entirely if possible, do not use preprocessors, do not use extensive operator overloading or templating. And check out the KDE/Qt API, they so far have been the only ones to master the language on a design level which in fact results in readable and maintainable code.