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loufoque wrote:

> Refcounting is not the same as a GC.

In terms of language advocacy, C++ gives you the tools to build whatever
quasi-GC system you want (including a true GC). It doesn't bend you over and
stuff the One True Garbage Collector up your butt.

--
Phlip
http://www.greencheese.us/ZeekLand <-- NOT a blog!!!

On Nov 18, 7:25 am, "blangela" <Bob_Langel...@telus.net> wrote:
> If you had asked me 5 years ago about the future of C++, I would have
> told you that its future was assured for many years to come. Recently,
> I have been starting to wonder.
> .. snip ..
> Please tell me I am wrong, and paint me a view of the future which
> includes C++.

Imho .NET will finally fall, as the open-source will knock it down, but
..NET is making it's final breaths... You just need to wait

blangela:

> What has changed? I believe that students are
> no longer interested in learning C++. They would rather learn .NET
> languages or Java (my colleages who teach these courses seem to be very
> busy!). I believe it is because these other languages are easier to
> learn and/or are perceived to be more relevant today.


I think that a prerequisite to being a decent programmer is to have above
average intelligence. A minority of people have above average intelligence,
and so a minorty of people aspire to be an actual bonafide programmer
programming in languages such as C and C++.

For the less bright among us, there's Java.


> Electronic Arts (if you have not heard of
> them, I guarantee that your kids have -- they create video games) is
> only one of several gaming companies here in Vancouver that employ
> primarily C++ programmers.


Computer games should be fast, and C++ can give performance.


> Not
> surprisingly, I have talked to several companies here in Vancouver who
> are complaining that they are having difficulty finding C++ developers
> and are looking at trying to recruit from abroad (eastern Europe
> primarily).


We've the same situation with medical doctors here in Ireland.

--

Frederick Gotham

I see a fair amount of responses to my initial post, but very few
people willing to go out on a limb and predict the future of C++.
Perhaps we will just have to wait and see.

In response to those people who were critical of my C++ course (the
post was not meant to get opinions on my course) I will mention the
following facts:

- I use as my primary text "C++ - How To Program" 5th edition by
Deitel & Deitel which is by far the most popular college C++ text in
the world! My favorite C++ text is actually "C++ Primer" 4th edition
by Lippman and company, but it is difficult to use as an introductory
C++ text - I do reference several sections from the text in my courses.

- Students are supposed to have taken the Java BlueJ courses (2 - 12
week courses, 3 hours/week including labs) as a prerequisite to my C++
courses. Thus I can expect that they already have experience with OOP.

- Classes are introduced in the first lecture of my course. So also
is the string class. I do not introduce pointers until the 8th
lecture. I suspect the text does so at that point so we can start
working with dynamically created objects (using the new and delete
operators). I could show how to assign a dynamically created object to
a reference rather than to a pointer, but this might lead students to
think this is the norm, which in my experience is not the case (I
wonder why it is not done more often?).

Cheers,

Bob

blangela wrote:

> If you had asked me 5 years ago about the future of C++,
> I would have told you that its future was assured for many years to come.
> Recently, I have been starting to wonder.
> [snip]
> Please tell me I am wrong
> and paint me a view of the future which includes C++.

The design of Java, C# and other such languages
sacrifice performance and efficiency for simplicity and convenience.
C++ is a larger and more difficult language because Bjarne Stroustrup
refused to compromise performance and efficiency --
he was targeting C programmers.

The Java designers realized that most applications didn't require
the performance and efficiency offered by C (and C++) and very carefully
calculated the trade-offs for simplicity and convenience.
The success of Java (and C#) have vindicated these trade-offs.

The future of C++ appears to be secure
where performance and efficiency count.
According to Bjarne Stroustrup, there are no viable competitors yet.

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E. Robert Tisdale wrote:
..
..
..
> The future of C++ appears to be secure
> where performance and efficiency count.
> According to Bjarne Stroustrup, there are no viable competitors yet.
>

But can there be C++ without C++ programmers?

blangela wrote:
....
>
> Please tell me I am wrong, and paint me a view of the future which
> includes C++.

C++ is a very large language with many many uses. It will persist for a
considerable time.

The biggest advantage for Java is that they have many useful
standardized libraries as part of the standard distribution. C++ has a
plethora of non standard libraries that do vastly more than Java but it
takes a significant amount of knowledge to navigate.

Boost has been an attempt to consolidate the C++ world and there are others.

The nice thing about some of the stuff I have seen is that the number of
amazing libraries I see showing up in C++ land are significantly better
than the Java or .NET systems and are probably more "robust" than Java
or .NET.

I have also met a number of Java coders who have migrated over to C++
because they're frustrated with Java.

If I was teaching C++ today, I would avoid C-isms in the "101" course
and only introduce the ones that "helped".

I would have a wrapper over main ...


int main( const std::vector< std::string > & args )
{
std::cout << "Hello world\n";
return 0;
}

blangela wrote:
> E. Robert Tisdale wrote:
> .
> .
> .
>> The future of C++ appears to be secure
>> where performance and efficiency count.
>> According to Bjarne Stroustrup, there are no viable competitors
>> yet.
>>
>
> But can there be C++ without C++ programmers?

No, but there is a lot off difference between "go away" and not being the
most popular language at the moment.

Both Java and .NET have large companies behind them, using millions and
millions for promotion. Of course they are popular, "the best thing since
sliced bread".

Bjarne can never compete with that. Even though he is right!


Bo Persson

Roland Pibinger <> wrote:

>IMO, that's the main reason. C++ is unnecessarily and unproductively,
>sometimes even ridiculously complex (see e.g.
>http://www.bookpool.com/ct/98031). There has been no effort in the
>last 10 or so years to make it easier and more accessible. Quite the
>contrary, an influential group of people even tries to 'boost' C++ by
>continuously introducing yet another level of complexity.

I don't think that C++ is too large and complex, yet, but
I do see possibly too much feature-creep via the standards process.
Standards activities tend to become spoiled by their own
success. Not to say that those involved aren't doing a
superb job, but standards work is very difficult (much more
difficult than development).

I have known of software managers to move away from C++
due to a concern it is getting too large and uncontrollable.

A better approach, I think, would be to use C++ but impose
some discipline as to what libraries are used (and perhaps even,
what (non-library) language features are routinely used, but
there I think the concern is smaller).

Steve

Steve Pope wrote:

> I don't think that C++ is too large and complex, yet, but
> I do see possibly too much feature-creep via the standards process.

Oh, totally, a new version once per decade is just blowing us all down.

--
Phlip
http://www.greencheese.us/ZeekLand <-- NOT a blog!!!