Which platform?
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So, we are just about to begin a new project. We're now deciding which platform should be used. The bosses asked me about this, and I replied that my bet was on C++ and Win32, as usual. A colleague voted for Java ( X| ) and someone there even dared to suggest VB ( X| X| ). At any rate, the bosses are worried about the future of C++ and Win32. They read somewhere that Microsoft's next OS won't be supporting anything but .NET Framework, so they are not convinced that C++ with Win32 should be the best option. So I'd like to ask for your opinion about this... C++ still has a future? Should we choose C# and .NET over good old C++ and Win32? Thanks.
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
Once upon a time, when IBM ruled the world, they came with a new language called PL/1. They said it the state of the art language, you can do anything with it and it will be the language of the future. They had a lot of influence so PL/1 stayed for many years in the market but now it's gone. Microsoft will not decide which will be the language of the future. Microsoft do not care. They want to sell Windows and Office. To do it they need us, the programmers to develop programs for Windows. If a critical mass will move to C# and .NET, they might consider not supporting C and C++ but if not, they will not do it. Windows programming is not everything. Unix still exists and Embedded programming exists also. When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++. And to my third thought of the subject. Each programming language as a place where it fills good to use it: FORTRAN for mathematical calculations. COBOL for database programming. RPG for database reports. PHP for web server side programming. C and C++ for fast execution code and devices programming. BASIC for fast GUI programming. Java for platform independence. What is the place for ASP? C#? Just to remind you, a server with PHP can hold many more clients than ASP. C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++. Are we buying faster computers so we could run the same application which now runs slower? Regards, Reuven Nisser
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Chris Losinger wrote:
which would make 100% of pre-2003 applications incompatible. that'd be awesome!
Yeah, but the next major OS (post-Vista) won't be out till maybe 2012-2013 or so.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
Currently working on C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications. (*Sample chapter available online*)When MS releases a replacement spec for the PE file specification (which all "native" apps and dlls are) and they move the system dlls, the kernel and the loader to this new specification I think that native apps are safe. Even then, there is no reason why c/c++ couldn't be compiled to a different spec. On linux it compiles to the ELF spec.
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Chris Losinger wrote:
then i suggest MS start telling people about this plan. 5 years is pretty tight, when you're talking about rewriting 99% of all Windows applications, especially if they have to target a moving-target framework like .Net.
Well pre-2003 would be 10 years and not 5. And ever since .NET was out around 2000-2001, it was evident that, that'd be the future of writing apps on Microsoft OSes. People were given adequate time to move on to newer technologies.
Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
Currently working on C++/CLI in Action for Manning Publications. (*Sample chapter available online*)IMO MS won't eliminate C++ (and probably not COM, either) for applications because, as one other poster indicated - there are just some tasks better done in C++. Sometimes that's for performance reasons (in which case they could support C++ but not the C++ Windows API); other times, however, there are things that can be done through the API that simply cannot be done throught the .Net object set. Yet. And, in general they have shown a great desire to remain backwards compatible - which suggests that they would not happily release an OS that caused people with legacy apps to say "Well, the app is more important than the OS upgrade: sorry MS, you don't get my upgrade revenue this time." That, probably, is the "killer app" of programming support - will it help or hinder the sale of the next OS? Balanced against, of course, a projection of total revenue earned on that OS vs. total development and support costs involved in persisting the old API. ~Chris Ice is like water, only harder.
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As it was mentioned before it depends on type of the project. If you do some very specific stuff like database or hardware providers, you probably have no choice and you must go into C++ direction. If you do pretty standard stuff, which does not require very advanced functionality and access to WinAPI you probably should go with C# as there is much more samples on the web and you simply can create app faster especially, when very is extensive GUI. The third choice is that you create most of app in C# and you distinguish couple of libraries which will be done in C++. I am not going to get into "Java vs MS platform" topic as this is a religious discussion and you must choose yourself which God do you believe in :-> I wish you luck in your choices as on this stage it is like getting married :laugh:
------------------------- Adam Koszlajda
This is everything I was thinking, great post. Except for the marriage line -- but ain't that the truth!
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Once upon a time, when IBM ruled the world, they came with a new language called PL/1. They said it the state of the art language, you can do anything with it and it will be the language of the future. They had a lot of influence so PL/1 stayed for many years in the market but now it's gone. Microsoft will not decide which will be the language of the future. Microsoft do not care. They want to sell Windows and Office. To do it they need us, the programmers to develop programs for Windows. If a critical mass will move to C# and .NET, they might consider not supporting C and C++ but if not, they will not do it. Windows programming is not everything. Unix still exists and Embedded programming exists also. When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++. And to my third thought of the subject. Each programming language as a place where it fills good to use it: FORTRAN for mathematical calculations. COBOL for database programming. RPG for database reports. PHP for web server side programming. C and C++ for fast execution code and devices programming. BASIC for fast GUI programming. Java for platform independence. What is the place for ASP? C#? Just to remind you, a server with PHP can hold many more clients than ASP. C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++. Are we buying faster computers so we could run the same application which now runs slower? Regards, Reuven Nisser
Reuven Nisser wrote:
When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++.
Reuven Nisser wrote:
COBOL for database programming
Reuven Nisser wrote:
C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++.
:confused::confused::confused: Man, what planet are you from??
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As it was mentioned before it depends on type of the project. If you do some very specific stuff like database or hardware providers, you probably have no choice and you must go into C++ direction. If you do pretty standard stuff, which does not require very advanced functionality and access to WinAPI you probably should go with C# as there is much more samples on the web and you simply can create app faster especially, when very is extensive GUI. The third choice is that you create most of app in C# and you distinguish couple of libraries which will be done in C++. I am not going to get into "Java vs MS platform" topic as this is a religious discussion and you must choose yourself which God do you believe in :-> I wish you luck in your choices as on this stage it is like getting married :laugh:
------------------------- Adam Koszlajda
Koszyk wrote:
As it was mentioned before it depends on type of the project
Yep, I know. But the bosses wouldn't even consider C++/Win32. However thanks to many entries I've found in MSDN blogs, articles, etc, regarding the future of C++ under Windows, I think they'll have to change their minds.
Koszyk wrote:
I wish you luck in your choices as on this stage it is like getting married
Hehe, well, that's it: I'll never get married then :). Thanks for your comments.
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
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Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At any rate, the bosses are worried about the future of C++ and Win32. They read somewhere that Microsoft's next OS won't be supporting anything but .NET Framework, so they are not convinced that C++ with Win32 should be the best option.
Where did the PHB's read this? Please have them supply a verifiable source and not a random blog like Gizmodo or Digg...
Mike Poz
Well... er... they gave me the sources, yet since they weren't from MSDN (and thus they're not official) I didn't payed attention. :->
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
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Why not consider other platforms? How about the new Adobe Apollo? Or go one step forward, and make your app web-based by using Adobe Flex Builder? Currently we are writing a very large application using Flex Builder and its great! Development is very quick and easy (data, by the way, is coming from web-services we write in C#) My roots will always be C++ and Win32, but for new apps you have to consider other things than Microsoft's future support: Ease of development, speed of development, maintainability, etc.
Lior Gonnen wrote:
Why not consider other platforms?
At this stage, we are beginning to consider the platforms, and I was commanded to make a study about this. And for a particular module, we'll have to do some web programming. I'll review your suggestions.
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
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:omg: Without C++, there won't be C# nor Java and -most likely- you'd be programming in VB. The Apocalypses.:) -- modified at 12:36 Thursday 22nd March, 2007
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
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:omg: Without C++, there won't be C# nor Java and -most likely- you'd be programming in VB. The Apocalypses.:) -- modified at 12:36 Thursday 22nd March, 2007
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
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then i suggest MS start telling people about this plan. 5 years is pretty tight, when you're talking about rewriting 99% of all Windows applications.
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
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Reuven Nisser wrote:
When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++.
Reuven Nisser wrote:
COBOL for database programming
Reuven Nisser wrote:
C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++.
:confused::confused::confused: Man, what planet are you from??
>>> When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++. Last time I heard there is no C# compiler for embedded systems. Does Simbian operating system or Sharc processors have C# compiler? Am I wrong? The world does not end with Microsoft Windows or Unix. >>> COBOL for database programming To remind you, one of the posts to this thread was talking about people still earning money from COBOL and RPG. >>> C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++. I do not know which tests you made, but I work with embedded system alot and as such, checked the assembly code produced by C++ and I even wrote assembly code in order to speed up some tasks. As such, I think I can safely say that in most cases emulation code will be much slower than native code. If you prove otherwise, you will change some theories in computer science and get a prize. Regards, Reuven Nisser
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Once upon a time, when IBM ruled the world, they came with a new language called PL/1. They said it the state of the art language, you can do anything with it and it will be the language of the future. They had a lot of influence so PL/1 stayed for many years in the market but now it's gone. Microsoft will not decide which will be the language of the future. Microsoft do not care. They want to sell Windows and Office. To do it they need us, the programmers to develop programs for Windows. If a critical mass will move to C# and .NET, they might consider not supporting C and C++ but if not, they will not do it. Windows programming is not everything. Unix still exists and Embedded programming exists also. When a programmer wants to cross platform his code, he can not use C# and .NET, he needs to use C and C++. And to my third thought of the subject. Each programming language as a place where it fills good to use it: FORTRAN for mathematical calculations. COBOL for database programming. RPG for database reports. PHP for web server side programming. C and C++ for fast execution code and devices programming. BASIC for fast GUI programming. Java for platform independence. What is the place for ASP? C#? Just to remind you, a server with PHP can hold many more clients than ASP. C# and .NET are very slow in comparison with C and C++. Are we buying faster computers so we could run the same application which now runs slower? Regards, Reuven Nisser
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
Well pre-2003 would be 10 years and not 5.
like many people who aren't doing web stuff, i'm still writing native apps *. the world didn't switch to .Net when VS03 came out. * in fact, i'm still writing apps using a 16-bit IDE. (Clarion)
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
No way! I'm using Clarion too. We are just now transitioning to C#/.NET and we are calling things back and forth between Clarion and C#. Jim
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Ahh well, to be honest I always thought the voting system was silly anyway and I thrive on obscurity! :)
John Cardinal wrote:
and I thrive on obscurity!
Fnord.
This statement was never false.
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
Limitations like lack of compile-time templates and inline assembly would be your fault then?
:laugh::laugh:.. come on!! be fair to C#, unless you prefer to code in VB X| :laugh:
Smile: A curve that can set a lot of things straight! (\ /) (O.o) (><)
What? C++ isn't an option? Its C# or VB? :confused:
This statement was never false.
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Shog9 wrote:
That said, C++ still wins out if you're looking to go cross-platform.
Not true at all, MONO is just about complete for .net 2 and will be soon for .net "3" and it's supported on many different platforms including windows, linux, mac, bsd etc: http://www.mono-project.com/Supported_Platforms[^] And even better you don't even need to recompile your assemblies, you just copy them over and run the program. Can't beat that.
How's the performance? Last I looked the metrics were way out on Mono in comparison to Window's implementation.
This statement was never false.
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No way! I'm using Clarion too. We are just now transitioning to C#/.NET and we are calling things back and forth between Clarion and C#. Jim
JimAtImpac wrote:
calling things back and forth between Clarion and C#.
that can't be any fun :)
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
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So, we are just about to begin a new project. We're now deciding which platform should be used. The bosses asked me about this, and I replied that my bet was on C++ and Win32, as usual. A colleague voted for Java ( X| ) and someone there even dared to suggest VB ( X| X| ). At any rate, the bosses are worried about the future of C++ and Win32. They read somewhere that Microsoft's next OS won't be supporting anything but .NET Framework, so they are not convinced that C++ with Win32 should be the best option. So I'd like to ask for your opinion about this... C++ still has a future? Should we choose C# and .NET over good old C++ and Win32? Thanks.
A polar bear is a bear whose coordinates has been changed in terms of sine and cosine. Personal Site
I think your question needs to be divided into two, i.e. should I use C++ or C# and, win32 or .NET. Remember C++ (or more correctly C++/CLI) is a full .NET language. Although most examples on the net are now C#, MS has never said C++ is on the way out. However that can't be said for win32 (over .NET), so may be you should also consider C++ and .NET.
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
Well pre-2003 would be 10 years and not 5.
like many people who aren't doing web stuff, i'm still writing native apps *. the world didn't switch to .Net when VS03 came out. * in fact, i'm still writing apps using a 16-bit IDE. (Clarion)
image processing toolkits | batch image processing | blogging
re:* my condolences.