.Net, WTL and MFC/ATL

Erik Funkenbusch

While indeed, VB has become more powerful, it still isn't a completley general purpose language. VB will only work in "managed" .NET mode. That means there are entire classes of applications which are not appropriate for .NET. You won't be seeing Symantec making their next virus scanner in .NET, nor will you see the next distributed.net client or seti@home client running in .NET. You won't see Disk defragmenters written in .NET. "Modern multi-tier applications" are only a subset of what people develop today.

Paul Westcott

I used to agree with you. I love c++ very dearly - the amount of hours of learning I have put in and the joy that I have got from those hours is great. (I would say the same for COM) But... But, alas and alack, other people do not have this love (which I find sad and in some ways disappointing) and trying to teach other people how to take over my work as I prepare to leave in a few months is somewhat difficult. Oh, you scoff, you code must be hard to read; obscure; badly written. No, no I don't think so. It's hard because I have used STL. It's hard because I have used c++ idioms. It's hard because I have used ATL. It's hard because I have used the BEST features of the language. It's hard because I used COM. There is a place for all these things; but that place is a very small place. It's some temple where miracles DO HAPPEN, but through blood, sweat and a lot of tears, and most people just don't want that complication in their lives. It makes me sad in some respect, but what we should be doing is choosing the simplist path, as it allows you to approach greater problems. (Now, I'm not saying that your typical VB programmer is capable of this; chances are they are a lazy two-bit swine, who is picking up a shit load of cash for a bag of beans; but...) The simple truth is that most software should be been like most consumer products; as throw away. When the technology becomes stable; well that's when all those hard fought and won battles of software engineering can come into play (or in rare cases!!). Hows this for stirring the flames? Unfortunantly, I'm coming to believe its true though. Have fun, Paul Westcott.

Chris Losinger

In my case, the simple truth is that it's hard because i choose to work on hard problems. The programming part is not hard and VB would not make it easier; Delphi would not make it easier. The only thing that would make the problem easier is if i changed the problem - but the problem is the interesting part. I feel sorry for people who are only interested in the end product. And to me, VB and other RAD tools represent these kind of people. [cue dramatic music and fade out...] :) -c ---- www.smalleranimals.com

Lost User

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Lost User

We should take the simplest path... Hmmm, so the simplest path includes garbage collection. Great. I've just completed one of (my 3 concurrent) projects in Java for a client that wanted use Java, wanted speech synthesis, real time etc etc, we had some rather horrible experiences with the garbage collector getting in the way, even if we tried forcing its scheduling. ANd it was differnt with VMs from differnt vendors! Ugh. Anyway we're moving onto the next. Now, switch to a CAD vendor with a 2 million line C++ program and they want to try garbage collection. Works very well until you overcommit the memory by loading a model that is too large, so some of it is out on disk. What happens when it does a GC? It touches every page in the memory. Lovely. That is the sort of performance 'improvement' you don't want. Garbage collection may be simple from a programmers perspective, but its not called garbage for nothing... Stephen

Christian Graus

*spontanteous applause* To say C++ is not for UI design is an insult to me and every other person who has designed UI's with it - no problem. Christian The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda. To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.

Lost User

VB is good for UIs (sometimes) C++ is good for everything and anything and Marketing Managers rarely know what they are talking about. If you tell them that a sexy cool UI is written in TurboC they will probably fall for it, so give it a rest and spare us the trouble.:mad: