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..."

Comments

Balkanization

[(1 -sqrt(5))*(2**-1)]

We're witnessing, I believe, the Balkanization of the software industry, where hybrids like C++ are being edged out; the ultimate trend: C where speed counts, and, for everything else, Java.

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.

C++ Dying?

[jetsfandb]

If they want my C++ compiler they will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!

Nah

[codeboost]

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 just got tired of being insulted

[Chemisor]

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.

Re:We just got tired of being insulted

[pslam]

What Mr. Chemisor is saying is very familiar to me. Whenever the subject of C++ comes up on Slashdot, a big bunch of drones regurgitate some absurdities they heard somewhere about how it's slow, hard to use, and bogged down in legacy support. Some morons even go so far as to suggest plain C is superior. Some morons go so far as to make enormous projects using plain C and a bunch of type information hacks using macros that only serve to move type checking from compile-time to a run-time performance hit (cough GTK cough).

We're just plain tired of giving the same answers to the same people who never listen and carry on regurgitating the same crap they heard from some uninformed idiot. There's one thing that's very obvious from the numerous appearances of C++ on Slashdot recently: very few of the readers here have actually used C++ in any serious way.

You're only hurting yourselves when you dismiss C++ out-of-hand for uninformed reasons.

Netcraft

[just_another_sean]

Has Netcraft confirmed this?

Re:C++ has its place

[LizardKing]

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.

Re:From my point of view

[macshit]

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...