C++Talk.NET C++ language newsgroups   Archives   FAQ   Search   Memberlist   Usergroups   Register   Profile   Log in to check your private messages   Log in  Why do you program in C++? Goto page 1, 2, 3 ... 14, 15, 16  Next          C++Talk.NET Forum Index -> C++ Language (Moderated) View previous topic :: View next topic   Author Message Scott Meyers Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:08 am    Post subject: Why do you program in C++? In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. I can think of several reasons why one might choose C++, but I can also think of several reasons why one might choose a different language. Here, I'm not interested in why one MIGHT choose C++, I'm interested in why people DO choose C++. If you're reading this newsgroup, you presumably use C++, possibly in addition to other languages. I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#. My goal here is not to start a C++ love-fest, nor is my goal to get people to dump on other languages. It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. Thanks very much to everyone -- and I hope there will be many -- who participates in this thread. Scott [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Dmitry Mityugov Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:08 am    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: .... Quote: languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. .... Just because C++ was the first widely used object-oriented language, or at least the first object-oriented language widely used by me. Advantages of other object-oriented languages are not enough to me to switch to them. Dmitry [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top R.F. Pels Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:44 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: Quote: It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? Because I sort of stumbled over it in the process of learning to program. And yes, I do use other languages. By choice too. Java for example. And I recently started looking a bit at OCAML. Then again, I also started tinkering in KDE/Qt, which is C++ also. But the main reason for using C++ and similar languages is that it is quite rich in the possibilities of expressing ideas and to me C++ has some sort of natural ability to keep constituent parts of a program small. And last-but-not-least, I think OO languages fit my type of reasoning or looking at problems better than other types of languages. -- Ruurd ..o. ...o ooo [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top David Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:50 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Hello Scott, On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 09:08:51 UTC, Scott Meyers <Usenet (AT) aristeia (DOT) com> wrote: Quote: In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. I can Developers should be able to choose their tools. A great many projects can be implemented in any language, with any development tools, and on nearly any operating system. Given the list of C++, Java, and C# how do they compare? They were developed in roughly that order. They are perhaps also listed in order of increasing support complexity. We don't all need our initial toolsets to include every conceivable method we might ever need. We might want to have some of that responsibility for ourselves. My personal choice was C++ because it existed. There were other choices too, and I learned and used many of them. Java requires extra support mechanisms that some of my devices do not have. A shared code base is therefore a problem. C# isn't widely supported and is available on only one of the fourteen machines that I develop for. Quote: think of several reasons why one might choose C++, but I can also think of several reasons why one might choose a different language. Here, I'm not interested in why one MIGHT choose C++, I'm interested in why people DO choose C++. If you're reading this newsgroup, you presumably use C++, possibly in addition to other languages. I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#. My goal here is not to start a C++ love-fest, nor is my goal to get people to dump on other languages. It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. If I were starting development today and could only choose from your stated languages C++ would probably win out. Java would be a close second. If my education was more Microsoft-oriented C# might have made more sense. By "Microsoft-oriented" I mean as a language they support and encourage. Those of us who have been around for any length of time have seen many generations of tools. New is not always better, though it can be. Still, if my philosophy was to embrace every new tool that came along every project I've worked on would have been with different tools. Most of them have. However, to change all my tools with every project would create a massive education curve and probably not much of an increase in capability. My concern over the tool debates is that they occur at all. As stated earlier, these tools have different goals and development timelines. Of more concern should be what we intend to do with them. Some projects are easier with given toolset. Sometimes the toolset is used to generate more tools. Porting to a new toolset base therefore has a higher cost, which may or may not be worth the effort. Many years ago such decisions were left to those that had the technical know how to weigh the costs of their decisions. Now there are more tools and a few more developers, but the decisions are not often made by the same knowledgeable people. The developers are no longer in charge. Often the customer or the general public has some say in the matter. That has ramifications that deserve its own thread. Quote: Thanks very much to everyone -- and I hope there will be many -- who participates in this thread. Scott Thank you for starting a nice thread for this week, David [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Nemanja Trifunovic Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:06 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Quote: why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C# I would distinguish between "simple to learn" and "simple to use". While C++ is not simple to learn, I find many programming tasks being much simpler to perform in C++ than in abovementioned "simple" languages. And to answer the original question: I use C++ simply because I have not found anything better so far (not that i haven't used other languages - including Java and C#). Give me a language with C++ semantics, Pascal-ish syntax, abundance of available libraries, and to be popular among employers as well - I will switch to it. In the meantime, C++ does the job just fine. [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Victor Bazarov Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:07 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: Quote: [...] I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#.[...] Our reason is very simple: our company has several products, originally written in C, and at some point they'd grown enough to need to involve more people, compartmentalize, componentize even further, abstract, generalize, and the natural way to comply with all those requirements and still use the existing code and people was to progress to C++. Besides, we support more than a dozen of platforms (with the same code, essentially), so portability is essential. Also, our applications have to be fast. Need I say more? :-) V [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Randy Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:08 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: [snip] Quote: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? [snip] Quote: Scott Because C++ supports enough programming styles/paradigms that it allows me to do my work in the way most natural for the problem at hand. Plus I like the stronger type safety coupled with low-level stuff when needed. Basically, C++ lets me program the way I want, without getting in my way, while still protecting me from screwing up too badly in most cases. What more could you ask for in a programming language? Randy. [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Sergei Organov Guest Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 3:16 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers <Usenet (AT) aristeia (DOT) com> writes: Quote: In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. Well, in the field I work most of time, real-time applications for embedded targets, C++ seems to be the only reasonable choice from the above mentioned languages. C is used as well, but C++ for me is definitely more pleasant to work with. So, the answer is: because from the mainstream languages that support OO and generic programming, C++ is most efficient from the point of view of resulting program code size and execution time. Predictable execution time is also a strict requirement, so non-optional GC is not an option. When I need to do something for ordinary computer, I either use C++ because I know it best and can reuse the code written for embedded targets and vise versa, or Python due to its simplicity and power (I've been able to write my first program in it in about a day, -- even in C++ that I use every day it would take me more time, I think). Sometimes I use Tcl/Expect as well. As for Java and C#, I didn't actually use either of them as I don't believe they could beat, e.g., Python, in usage simplicity. I'm afraid their wide-spreading is mostly due to the marketing issues behind them, not due to their outstanding simplicity, power, or portability, sorry. -- Sergei. [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Emil Kirichev Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:53 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? I use it for 2 reasons: 1. freedom. c++ gives me the freedom to apply various techniques 2. the pleasure while coding c++, and seeing the end result (preferably positive result ) [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Russell Hind Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:53 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: Quote: Thanks very much to everyone -- and I hope there will be many -- who participates in this thread. One big reason I like C++ is type-safety at compile-time. I've only played with java, c# and objective-c, but none of them give the same checking at compile time. The second big reason is the determinism of C++. For stack-based objects you know when constructors/destructors will be called (compiler bugs aside ) etc. This is another big plus for me. Aside from that, as others have mentioned, some of the libraries now available for C++ are very interesting. boost::spirit and boost::lambda are two examples uses of the language I'd never have imagined a few years ago (now if only our main compiler could cope with them ...) Cheers Russell [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Nicola Musatti Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:54 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? I program in C++ because, when the project I'm working on was started, someone decided it was to be done in C++. Now, six years, eight releases, over a hundred screens and well over half a million lines of code later (and with the original decision maker long gone elsewhere) I'm convinced that this was the right choice. In my view, for a rather traditional, three layer (DB, Model, GUI) application like the one we're developing, C++ strikes a positive balance of three features: its expressiveness, in conjunction with its support for type safety, is helpful in modelling the intricacies of the domain we deal with; its being a traditional, fully compiled, light runtime language gives us good performance without requiring that we spend lots of time in tuning; and its popularity makes it not too difficult to find staff. The real question, however, is: why did I stay this long? There are other considerations obviously, but one of the main reasons is this is the only project I came across in which I could program in C++. C++ is my favourite programming language. I find that it better suits my way of thinking than any other language I ever programmed in or read about. This probably has to do with its being the statically typed language that better supports the combination of object oriented and generic programming, which in turn makes it possible to translate into code with very high precision the variabilities and commonalities of the application domain, in the sense described by Jim Coplien in "Multi-Paradigm Design for C++". Moreover, C++ allows me to do it with very little redundancy, that is I find that I'm very seldom forced to code the same conceptual operation more than once. This is not only a question of efficiency (i.e. laziness but also and again, a matter of implementing the model that best fits the problem domain. People arguing that there's a single or a set of appropriate languages for each project are probably right, but they often fail to take into account that people are not language neutral; their knowledge, experience and way of thinking influences their productivity in different languages. I'm convinced I'd still be more productive in C++ than in any other language I know about, even if I got a chance of acquiring the same degree of experience. Cheers, Nicola Musatti P.S. Now, if I only started writing *about* C++, instead of *in* C++, I might stand a better chance of becoming the next Scott Meyers :-) [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Fernando Cacciola Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:55 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? I had been programming in C++ for more than a decade, and in C# for some more than a year. I've never seriously programmed in Java I choose C++ over C# because: * It has multiple inheritance. (Please, spare me the OO purisim, lack of MI _is_ annoying) * It better supports multiparadigm programming (functional, aspect-oriented, etc) * It has static templates (instead of Generics) * It supports metaprogramming * It better supports low-level performance-controlled programming. * Finally: All of the above allows the language to base outstanding libraries that IMHO exceed by far their counterparts in any other language. Having said that, I would like to mention the few things I miss in C++ from C#. * Stricter type system * Built-in interfaces * Built-in GC * Reflexion (and Attributes) Now of course most of that would be merged into the C++/CLR. Fernando Cacciola [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top Junker Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:57 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers <Usenet (AT) aristeia (DOT) com> wrote Quote: In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. I can think of several reasons why one might choose C++, but I can also think of several reasons why one might choose a different language. Here, I'm not interested in why one MIGHT choose C++, I'm interested in why people DO choose C++. If you're reading this newsgroup, you presumably use C++, possibly in addition to other languages. I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#. My goal here is not to start a C++ love-fest, nor is my goal to get people to dump on other languages. It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. Thanks very much to everyone -- and I hope there will be many -- who participates in this thread. Scott I work for a games company that uses C++ for performance reasons as well as for compatibility reasons with legacy codebases developed predominantly in C. Traditionally tools here have been developed using MFC, but the newer tools in the company are being developed with the ..NET languages, with C# being a popular choice. [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top jtorjo@yahoo.com Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:58 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? Scott Meyers wrote: Quote: In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. I can think of several reasons why one might choose C++, but I can also think of several reasons why one might choose a different language. Here, I'm not interested in why one MIGHT choose C++, I'm interested in why people DO choose C++. If you're reading this newsgroup, you presumably use C++, possibly in addition to other languages. I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#. My goal here is not to start a C++ love-fest, nor is my goal to get people to dump on other languages. It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. Just because C++ is a continuous challenge. When you think you know everything -- then pops a new library or article, or so, showing you something you never thought would be possible: may that be (techniques described in) "Modern C++ Design", MPL, boost::bind, and so on. (p.s. -- efficiency is not a major concern for me) Best, John -- John Torjo, Contributing editor, C/C++ Users Journal -- "Win32 GUI Generics" -- generics & GUI do mix, after all -- http://www.torjo.com/win32gui/ -v1.6.3 (Resource Splitter) -- http://www.torjo.com/cb/ - Click, Build, Run! [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] Back to top HappyHippy Guest Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:58 pm    Post subject: Re: Why do you program in C++? "Scott Meyers" <Usenet (AT) aristeia (DOT) com> wrote Quote: In my experience, C++ is alive and well -- thriving, even. This surprises many people. It is not uncommon for me to be asked, essentially, why somebody would choose to program in C++ instead of in a simpler language with more extensive "standard" library support, e.g., Java or C#. I can think of several reasons why one might choose C++, but I can also think of several reasons why one might choose a different language. Here, I'm not interested in why one MIGHT choose C++, I'm interested in why people DO choose C++. If you're reading this newsgroup, you presumably use C++, possibly in addition to other languages. I'd be very interested to know why you choose C++ over languages like Java and C#. My goal here is not to start a C++ love-fest, nor is my goal to get people to dump on other languages. It's a truly neutral question: given that there are many languages to choose from, why do you choose to program in C++? I don't care if the reaons are technical, political, social, or what, I'm just honestly curious. Thanks very much to everyone -- and I hope there will be many -- who participates in this thread. Scott I'll be brief: C++ is the best! :) [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. 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