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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..."
Though it were hard for me to imagine, for instance, Unreal's engine being ported to Java, Quake seems to have fared well with feral C.
If they want my C++ compiler they will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, The hands acqui
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.
Has Netcraft confirmed this?
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Despite my love for C++ I find myself writing less and less C++ code. Why? Well, I guess it's due Ruby ( http://www.ruby-lang.org/ ) in my case. And whenever I make an extention in Ruby I write it in C, not C++. Why should I spend 5 days writing a tool in C++ when I can write it in 5 hours using Ruby ?
I feel sad about not using C++ more often though, because it really was my favorite language for a long time. I just can't think of any project idea I have where C++ would be better suited than Ruby.
C++ remains as the only proper object-oriented language. Despite all the years of continuous development in languages, there has yet arisen an overall better object-oriented language. Yes it's ugly. Yes it's cryptic. Yes, it explodes often. But there isn't another language that does things better.
C++ the "only proper object oriented language"?!? It started life as a kludged on Modula extension to C. It has evolved into an overly complex language that includes elements of many programming paradigms, but implements all but the procedural ones poorly. The procedural stuff came from C anyway. Objective C is far closer to a "proper" object-oriented language, adding the minimum to C to give it OOP features. Smalltalk itself is the purest OOP language.
Java - Oh wow, a language that inherited the syntax from C++. Also completely controlled by a useless business committee. Tack on the JVM and you have yourself a C++ killer! Oh wait...
It inherited procedural syntax from C, not C++. The OOP aspects were inherited from Objective C and SmallTalk, along with a class library that owes much to NeXTstep/OpenStep. Gosling and other Sun engineers must have been exposed to NeXT's development platform during the brief Sun dalliance with OpenStep. As for being controlled by a "business" committee, my experience of Java's evolution is that it was largely driven byb engineers at Sun. Anyway, Stroustrup and the ISO committees haven't done a great job with C++.
As for being a C++ killer, it seems to be exactly that at my current employer. Our content delivery systems have been rewritten in Java and C, replacing a C++ monstrosity. Our only outsourced application is in the process of being rewritten in Java rather to replace the current C++ version from the same vendor. C++ ain't just dying, it's dead here.
C# - Like Java, but worse. Switch the Java committee for a Microsoft one. Switch JVM for .NET. Stupidity for everyone!
Although it's just Java for Windows, C# is a much more elegant language than C++.
Objective-C - Is it used ever outside of Apple development?
Why's that, doesn't development for MacOS X amount to much then? Plus, the Cocoa APIs are far more elegant than the hideous STL abomination.
Smalltalk - Nice and pretty. And unheard of outside of the niche.
It was ahead of it's time, but obscurity doesn't mean it's a poorer language than C++.
Python, Ruby, etc. - Often considered too slow.
Only in urban myths.
C++ still is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to program anything in it, because we do not program anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to program.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
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....
You're repeating some classic received knowledge about C++ that happens not to be true. I have to admit that for a long time I bought into the story that C++ was like C, only more complicated. And that C++ is fundamentally about object oriented programming.
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I got over my dislike of C++ about two days ago when I decided to use Qt to do some programming, which pretty much forces you into C++. I was really shocked at how unpleasant it *wasn't*. I've had some really bad experiences with Java - a lot of "model" is forced down your throat. Using C++ felt very natural, and I noticed a huge number of really nice touches that are quite cheap, because they're done by the compiler, but that (a) make your coding less error-prone, and (b) are just horribly convenient.
So my point here is that if you've been hearing for years that C++ isn't worth your time because it's object oriented or because it's just C warmed over, neither of these statements is true. I'm embarrassed to have ever repeated them (sad to say, I have done so in the past).
I really don't think C++ is on the way out. My main complaint about it at this point is that g++ is too verbose when I use an overloaded function that doesn't exist - it prints a list of all the possible candidates, which can get quite long. I don't think that's a capital crime, though.
Dunno what you mean by "advanced software", but C has its place when programming near hardware. C++ will hopefully die and take buffer overflows and memory leaks with it.
BWA hahahahah
That's pretty funny, pointing out that C++ has buffer overflows and memory leaks when compared with C. Especially since C++ has vastly better techniques for dealing with those particular problems.
Ahem.
But seriously, there is absolutely no reason why properly-written C++ can't be precisely as efficient as straight C, and as an added bonus, you get a more strongly-typed language with extra features.
I've been writing in C and C++ for close to 20 years, and C++ is just plain a better language than C. Sure, it has some crazy warts and dangerous bits, and things that can be problematic if you don't know what you are doing... but I submit to you that if you don't know what you are doing, you need to find another line of work.
Sure, other languages are definitely better in some scenarios -- it's all about using the right tool for the job! -- but for "close to the machine" work, you need a language like C or C++, and frankly, I can't understand why anyone with sufficient programming experience, and a real working knowledge of both languages, would voluntarily choose plain C over C++.
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