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Demise of C++?
fashla writes "Several somber and soul searching threads have been recently posted to the USENET newsgroup comp.lang.c++ such as "C++ is Dead" and "A Dying Era". The reason for this reflective mood is the sudden demise of the magazine C/C++ Users Journal (CUJ) http://www.cuj.com/ that had been published by CMP Media. Participating in the posts have been such C++ luminaries such as Bjarne Stroustrup and P.J. Plauger. While some contributers think that CUJ's demise is due to the general trend away from print, others think something else is afoot..."
If you put it that way, everything is dying. I bet a buck that C# or Java will be dead as a rock in 20 years, just like C++ and most of the other programming languages we know today.
What we are noticing today is that programming languages alone just don't cut it anymore. The software is so advanced, that standard language constructs and libraries are way too raw to be applied to something useful for the average application programmer. Knowing frameworks, APIs and libraries is becoming a lot more important than using all the language paradigms and hidden tricks.
I think C++'s user base is splitting: On one hand there are the library and API developers, for whom the standard and the language are wholy. On the other hand, there are the application programmers, who care about the practical side of the language; they use it because it has advantages over other languages and has lots of libraries written for it.
My belief is that C++ is more alive today than ever. It is more powerful than ever. And it will be for a long time (in technology terms, indeed). Of course, in 10 years time it won't be recognizable. But it's wrong to say that C++ is dying.
We, C++ programmers, just got tired of being insulted all the time, so we don't talk much any more. After all, every time we mention C++ we are told how bad it is and how stupid we all are for using it. Sure, we can rebut all those arguments, but there are so many loud people declaiming them that nobody ever hears us. So, we just shrug, shut up, and go back to writing code. If you don't want to listen, you are only hurting yourselves and your employers.
A lot of the shit heaped on C++ for being slow was due to the use of V-tables. V-Tables are another layer of indirection that come about with virtual function use in C++. People incorrectly assuemd that C++ always uses V-tables in order perform any function call - virtual or not, hence the belief that C++ is slower than C.
But v-tables are only created when virtual functions are used in classes, and only then. If no virtual functions are used then a C++ program can use static linking the same as for a C compiler. Given that C++ compilers are also defined to be C compilers, then for any given C++ compiler (and no virtual functions in the C++), C and C++ code should run at the same speed.
Now if you want to compare *different* C and C++ compilers, that is a seperate matter.
If you are interested in the inner C++ workings I can suggest any of the Scott Meyers books. Other people can probably suggest other authors as well.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You're way off. So far that I'd say you've never read or written modern C++ code. There's a lot of metaprogramming. Look into templates sometime. Try out the STL and the boost libraries. There are significant C++ programs that are not object-oriented and would be nearly impossible to duplicate in C with the same kind of efficiency.
I find C++ to be an ugly, ugly language, but it's also a lot more than the "C + classes" that it used to be.
Saying that C++ is dead because C/C++ Users Journal is no more is about as ridiculous as saying that Linux is dead because Linuxworld magazine is dead. I'm sorry, but the two are not interconnected at all. True, there's no real magazine for C and C++ developers in the newsstands, but if magazine popularity has anything to do with it, then the same can be said for Perl, Python, Ruby, and a myriad of other languages that aren't in print. I'd be more inclined to say that the publishing industry for language content is dead as when it was time to renew my subscription to C/C++ UJ, I opted instead to not renew. Why pay $29.95 (or whatever the sliding scale that CMP Media uses to determine what you pay that month) for a bunch of articles that may or may not relate to doing useful work with C/C++ (and admit it... how many pure C++ articles were there? I remember many more articles on D, Java interoperability, and the like than there were C/C++ articles). I found that the one section I did read religiously was the fictional workplace created by Herb Sutter and his co-author (the name escapes me at the moment) which detailed three coders (the master, the apprentice, and the guru) against "Bob". That was about it.
:)
So, I don't think that C++ is going anywhere because the journal is going away... I think instead people who are using C++ will go elsewhere for information about C++.
No story here... move along.
...in that there's often more than one (or one dozen) ways to do something. I think a lot of scorn heaped on C++ is due to the fact that the scorner at some point opened up an STL file (or anything generated by Microsoft's ATL) and ran screaming. And frankly, they're right...that's some imposing syntax and not at all friendly to read or understand.
But what I've told people again and again is that *you* don't have to write it that way. Don't understand multiple inheritence? Fine...*don't use it*. Don't get templates? Fine...*don't use them*. We still use VC6 and its template functionality isn't even complete!
The truth is, you can have bizzare WTF moments in *any* language. A lot of what people attribute to the failure of a language is the failure of a programmer to properly explain what his/her code does in a straightforward way *using the code itself*. The best code is clean and concise and C++ gives you as much opportunity to do this as any language. Sure you can have multi-thousand line functions in C++, but this isn't a failure of the language to somehow magically break it apart for you into better organized bits, it's a failure to understand that a language, *any* language, whether purely written or even spoken, is to convey a message, a story, and without careful attention to detail, can become an unholy mess (like this post).
Among all the programming languages I've used over the last 25 years (6502/6809/m68k/... assembly, Prolog/Miranda/... functional, Perl/Tcl/Python/Lisp/Java/... interpreted, C/C++/PL-1/... compiled), only 2 really stand out as "excellent" tools:
C++ and Python. I really have to struggle picking which one I love to write programs in more. They both have their place, and they are both lovely in their own way.
As far as C++ goes, since it exposes all the "knobs and dials" of the underlying computing architecure, it does have a very long learning curve. However, Template Metaprogramming is unlike anything, available anywhere, in any other language.
Listening to all these Java/C# fanboys flame C++ templates, and compare them to "Generics" etc., is like listening to guys compare their cool Ox-Cart wheel mods, while saying how much that new-fan-dangled "ferr-ar-eee" Sucks...
Yes, it took *years* for me to master C++. Someone smarter, and/or with better (read: any) instruction would -- and should -- do better. But, being able to express an algorithm purely, which will compile efficiently to process *any* type(s), stored in *any* container, accross *any* architecture, with full static type checking and bare-metal hand-coded assembly language efficiency, is something truly unique in the programming language world today.
When some other language comes out with something better and more efficient than Template Metaprogramming, let me know. 'Til then, its C++, baby!
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
The problem with C++ is that it is neither as simple as C nor has it the benefits of Java and C# as they allow for code that is easier to read and understand. The available tools are also better for the competing environments on the upper side.
My experience with C++ and Java is that Java is simpler to get your head around, but can really get annoying once you get going, because of the number of gross hacks and workarounds required to avoid excessive heap allocation. Compared to C, C++ often results in dramatically clearer code, simply because it offers the ability to wrap things with enough syntactic sugar that it makes source code much more concise.
However, taking advantages of C++'s strengths requires some discipline, and requires programmers to understand what's going on to some degree, and as we all know, the great majority of programmers are idiots.
I suppose in the end, the best progamming language for idiots will win...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Unfortunately for C++, there are very few programs for which this is the appropriate niche.
The RAND corporation says that more than 70% of all software is embedded software. Embedded as an industry is almost universally C++. Please do not confuse being in a different branch of the industry with a branch of industry simply not existing.
StoneCypher is Full of BS