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blangela
Guest
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 Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: The Future of C++ ? |
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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.
I have been teaching C++ at a local polytechnical school here in
Vancouver, Canada for approximately 8 years. Six years ago, at the
height (or should I say volume?) of the internet bubble, I had 80+
students per semester in my C++ course. Now I am fortunate to have 15
students per semester. 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 do believe that C++ is more difficult to learn than many of these
other languages. Despite my best efforts to make them exciting, I see
the eyes of my students start to glaze over when I start explaining
pointers. When I ask them to tokenize an english sentence (using the
strtok() function) and print the token in reverse order (they need to
declare an array of type char * and save the addresses of the tokens in
this array), I experience near panic from many of my students. But
these concepts need to be taught in a responsible C++ course. As was
pointed out to me recently, Microsoft still requires applicants to
demonstrate a very good knowledge of string manipulation using C-style
strings (none of these fancy string class objects!) when recruiting C++
programmers.
The ironic part is there is still a large demand for C++ developers
here in Vancouver. In fact, the company that I believe employs the
most developers here in Vancouver, employs almost entirely C++
programmers. This company, 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. Other companies like Kodak, MDSA, Nokia,
MDSI, etc. also employ large numbers of C++ programmers. 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).
I believe that many of these companies will be forced to migrate away
from C++ in the near future, simply because they will not be able to
find C++ programmers in the future. Soon the baby boomer C++
programmers will begin to retire, then the proverbial @@@@ will really
start to hit the fan!
Please tell me I am wrong, and paint me a view of the future which
includes C++. |
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Alf P. Steinbach
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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* blangela:
| Quote: | 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.
I have been teaching C++ at a local polytechnical school here in
Vancouver, Canada for approximately 8 years. Six years ago, at the
height (or should I say volume?) of the internet bubble, I had 80+
students per semester in my C++ course. Now I am fortunate to have 15
students per semester. 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 do believe that C++ is more difficult to learn than many of these
other languages. Despite my best efforts to make them exciting, I see
the eyes of my students start to glaze over when I start explaining
pointers. When I ask them to tokenize an english sentence (using the
strtok() function)
|
There you have it: you're teaching the hard C parts first. Am I right
that these students who're choosing between Java, C# and C++ have no
programming background? I then think learning C# (or even JavaScript!)
first is a good idea wrt. learning programming, and learning Java a good
idea wrt. learning something helpful in getting a job without learning
more first.
| Quote: | and print the token in reverse order (they need to
declare an array of type char * and save the addresses of the tokens in
this array), I experience near panic from many of my students. But
these concepts need to be taught in a responsible C++ course. As was
pointed out to me recently, Microsoft still requires applicants to
demonstrate a very good knowledge of string manipulation using C-style
strings (none of these fancy string class objects!) when recruiting C++
programmers.
|
Again, teach 'em use of standard library classes first. std::string
isn't fancy. Show that C++ can be a productive language at that level.
After learning "high level" C++, teach them in a separate course about
the C subset.
Course e.g. entitled "The C subset of C++: pointers & other hairy
stuff", where for example you can go into why two-phase initialization
isn't a very bright idea in general, but why it's necessary on some
limited platforms such as Symbian C++ (lacking C++ exceptions).
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is it such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? |
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Chris Thomasson
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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[...]
| Quote: | (Note, Java-philes, I did _not_ say smart pointers are the equivalent of
Java references. Each has different robustness profiles.)
|
Java references (e.g., strong thread-safe reference counting) in C++? No
problem:
http://appcore.home.comcast.net/vzoom/refcount/
This can be used as an alternative to Boost shared_ptr, which is only basic
thread-safe....
Any thoughts? |
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shabbir
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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I would frame it that way that people are running behind short term
gain.
I am a C++ programmer myself and havent had any training or havent read
any book of C# but I am doing job in C# for 8-9 months now without
facing any real problem and thats because I was good at C++.
When they run for one technology they become lame in a sense that its
temporary and C++ is more or less the base and so its permanent.
As we see now C# has descendant like F# and so you cannot be learning
each of them but if you have the base you can opt for anything anytime
and so still I think C++ is the future.
Thanks
Shabbir
--
www.cfanatic.com - Community discussing C and its derivatives like
Win32, C++, MFC, C# tutorials
On Nov 18, 10:25 am, "blangela" <Bob_Langel...@telus.net> wrote:
| Quote: | 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.
I have been teaching C++ at a local polytechnical school here in
Vancouver, Canada for approximately 8 years. Six years ago, at the
height (or should I say volume?) of the internet bubble, I had 80+
students per semester in my C++ course. Now I am fortunate to have 15
students per semester. 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 do believe that C++ is more difficult to learn than many of these
other languages. Despite my best efforts to make them exciting, I see
the eyes of my students start to glaze over when I start explaining
pointers. When I ask them to tokenize an english sentence (using the
strtok() function) and print the token in reverse order (they need to
declare an array of type char * and save the addresses of the tokens in
this array), I experience near panic from many of my students. But
these concepts need to be taught in a responsible C++ course. As was
pointed out to me recently, Microsoft still requires applicants to
demonstrate a very good knowledge of string manipulation using C-style
strings (none of these fancy string class objects!) when recruiting C++
programmers.
The ironic part is there is still a large demand for C++ developers
here in Vancouver. In fact, the company that I believe employs the
most developers here in Vancouver, employs almost entirely C++
programmers. This company, 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. Other companies like Kodak, MDSA, Nokia,
MDSI, etc. also employ large numbers of C++ programmers. 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).
I believe that many of these companies will be forced to migrate away
from C++ in the near future, simply because they will not be able to
find C++ programmers in the future. Soon the baby boomer C++
programmers will begin to retire, then the proverbial @@@@ will really
start to hit the fan!
Please tell me I am wrong, and paint me a view of the future which
includes C++. |
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loufoque
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Chris Thomasson wrote:
Refcounting is not the same as a GC. |
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Phlip
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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blangela wrote:
| Quote: | Please tell me I am wrong, and paint me a view of the future which
includes C++.
|
Modern C++ is a very powerful language, and the existing literature and
corpus of example software lags far behind its capacities.
Java and .NET thrive due to "management by magazine". Because the price of
C++ is a high risk of bugs, marketects can advertise Java (and its direct
clone) as "safer and more robust".
Programmers who actually learn C++ are directly competitive with the VM
languages. Those languages typically _reduce_ their available features, to
make code appear easier to make right. This generally causes you to write
more cruft in those languages.
A C++ programmer will deliberately but _voluntarily_ reduce their set of
working techniques, till they are using ones with matching robustness.
(Note, Java-philes, I did _not_ say smart pointers are the equivalent of
Java references. Each has different robustness profiles.)
The distinction is C++ programmers have the _option_ to get closer to the
metal, when they need it.
Contrarily, the majority of programming these days is high-level; trivially
gluing applications together from large-scale components, such as GUIs and
databases. The GUIs and databases themselves should be slowly written once,
in C++. The high-level code should be rapidly written in a safer and more
flexible scripting language.
There may not always be a world for average C++ coders, but there will
always be a world for the C++ code itself.
--
Phlip
http://www.greencheese.us/ZeekLand <-- NOT a blog!!! |
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E. Robert Tisdale
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Bo Persson wrote:
| Quote: | 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!
|
Bjarne certainly could compete.
But he has moved on to bigger and better things.
The first big problem with Java and .NET is that
they are not publicly owned standards like C++.
The language definitions can (and do) change without notiece.
This usually isn't a problem because the typical application
written in Java (or the Microsoft equivalent) has a very short life.
A better question is, "What is the future of Java?"
Computer programming languages tend to become more complex
in order to deal with ever more complex applications.
Eventually, Java may be as complex as C++
and the advantages will disappear.
----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
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BobR
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Bo Persson wrote in message <4s9c3mFuoonnU1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net>...
| Quote: |
Both Java and .NET have large companies behind them, using millions and
millions for promotion.
|
.....and suppression. Buy the competition, and shut it down!
[ goodbye Tex Murpjy. ;-{ ]
Fortunately, GNU ain't for sale.
--
Bob R
POVrookie |
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Tony
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps (AT) start (DOT) no> wrote in message
news:4s7lvvFtmn6fU1 (AT) mid (DOT) individual.net...
| Quote: | After learning "high level" C++, teach [students] in a separate course
about the C subset.
|
Ha! As if that was even a possibility considering the first thing they
encounter is main()!
Tony |
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Noah Roberts
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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blangela wrote:
| Quote: | 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.
I have been teaching C++ at a local polytechnical school here in
Vancouver, Canada for approximately 8 years. Six years ago, at the
height (or should I say volume?) of the internet bubble, I had 80+
students per semester in my C++ course. Now I am fortunate to have 15
students per semester. 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.
|
Hey, that's great news. Less cheap labor competition makes me a more
expensive commodity. It also makes my life easier when I don't have to
deal with the bozos comming out of college these days. Let them write
horrible crap in C# or Java. I win either way...I can't loose, no way
is C++ going away any time soon, so this can only be good news.
I say make your course tougher. Weed out the idiots for us. |
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Kai-Uwe Bux
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Phlip wrote:
| Quote: | Kai-Uwe Bux wrote:
How would you mimmick partial specialization?
The point: You just don't need to.
|
I don't buy that.
| Quote: | Partial specialization fixes a symptom, not the root cause...
|
And in addition, it open new venues for programming.
Don't get me wrong. I have oftentimes missed being able to do
void f ( type A ) {
A a;
...
}
and I would welcome an extension of C++ in this direction (although
overloading the dot operator should have priority). However, such an
extension would be by and large unrelated to the C++ template mechanism and
by no means a substitute. There are areas where both methods could compete,
but not every use of templates is of that type.
Best
Kai-Uwe Bux |
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peter koch
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Kai-Uwe Bux skrev:
[snip]
| Quote: | Don't get me wrong. I have oftentimes missed being able to do
void f ( type A ) {
A a;
...
}
and I would welcome an extension of C++ in this direction
|
Am I the only one failing to see whats wrong with
template<typename A>
void f() {
A a;
...
}
What problems does the above function have which your solution solves?
/Peter |
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Earl Purple
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 10:11 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Actually the C library we have to link against has no such issues. We
can link against that with any C++ code we like. If they provided a C++
wrapper it would mean we didn't have to write our own but at least we
didn't have the same issues.
One solution would be a standard C++ runtime library (per machine), so
that vendors can write C++ libraries which would simply link against
the standard C++ runtime library installed on the system, the same way
that C code links against the native C runtime library.
On UNIX machines this should include any POSIX extensions (which were
often in the headers like <time.h> and are now in <ctime>).
Standard name-mangling (per platform) would also help. |
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Chris Thomasson
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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"blangela" <Bob_Langelaan (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote in message
news:1164607384.810882.234500 (AT) h54g2000cwb (DOT) googlegroups.com...
| Quote: |
Tony wrote:
"blangela" <Bob_Langelaan (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote in message
news:1164563711.439326.286200 (AT) j72g2000cwa (DOT) googlegroups.com...
APNelson.L (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
blangela wrote:
I have been teaching C++ at a local polytechnical school here in
Vancouver, Canada for approximately 8 years.
|
[...]
| Quote: | Well note too that the bookstores are dumbing down the book selection to
commercial product manuals rather than computer science stuff. Today's
generation of "programmers" are closer to assembly line workers than
their predecessors.
Tony
I agree with you on this point. I know of a Java instructor at my
school who feels it is a waste of time to teach students data
structures or sorting algorthms -- Java provides different container
classes and sorting algorthms to select from, so why should the student
need to learn these topics. I disagree. I feel that there is still
room for the "science" in "computer science".
|
I completely disagree with the Java instructor as well. Data-structures and
sorting algorithms' are fundamental! Its sad that the current trend in
computer science seems to be aimed at very high-level languages which
abstract fundamental methods and techniques away to a dangerous point. It
can lead to a scenario in which a Java programmer might not now how to
create or even sort a linked list. The Java programmer might not even now
how to create a dynamic array from scratch... I feel your pain! |
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Ian Collins
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:10 am Post subject: Re: The Future of C++ ? |
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Chris Thomasson wrote:
| Quote: | "blangela" <Bob_Langelaan (AT) telus (DOT) net> wrote in message
news:1164607384.810882.234500 (AT) h54g2000cwb (DOT) googlegroups.com...
Tony wrote:
Well note too that the bookstores are dumbing down the book selection to
commercial product manuals rather than computer science stuff. Today's
generation of "programmers" are closer to assembly line workers than
their predecessors.
Tony
I agree with you on this point. I know of a Java instructor at my
school who feels it is a waste of time to teach students data
structures or sorting algorthms -- Java provides different container
classes and sorting algorthms to select from, so why should the student
need to learn these topics. I disagree. I feel that there is still
room for the "science" in "computer science".
I completely disagree with the Java instructor as well. Data-structures and
sorting algorithms' are fundamental! Its sad that the current trend in
computer science seems to be aimed at very high-level languages which
abstract fundamental methods and techniques away to a dangerous point. It
can lead to a scenario in which a Java programmer might not now how to
create or even sort a linked list. The Java programmer might not even now
how to create a dynamic array from scratch... I feel your pain!
How many new grads can build a system in asembly language? |
As an field grows, one either has to specialise in a niche, or become a
generalist.
If they haven't done so already, CS degrees will follow that path.
--
Ian Collins. |
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