http://cpp.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24?format=rss Tribe.net. Local Connections http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#13186aff-e218-43de-b91b-e1eda7a5d201 Just an obervation, The C++ tribe here is languishing in relative obscurity compared to the PHP, Python, and Java tribes here at Tribe.net. I love C++, although the syntax can get a bit dense at times, but I am wondering: Are we just holding on to a dinosaur or is it the makeup of the Tribe.net community that creates this dichotomy? Any ideas? Wed, 29 Oct 2003 03:01:09 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#13186aff-e218-43de-b91b-e1eda7a5d201 Adeh 2003-10-29T03:01:09Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#5e3ab11c-568b-4974-8b98-fc95b0609782 Adeh, That's an interesting observation. I know personally, I've been doing baby C++ by reading and writing toy programs. It was until I read Industrial Strength C++ in action that it all fell into place. Now I have a means for getting into large C++ programs. But to me the action is with PHP, Lazslo, Perl, Ruby, and Python. And XML, RDF, FOAF is the next generation. I am now only just seeing this but XML changes everything. XML appears to have solidified 'API heaven'. WIth XML-RPC, we have hardware agnosticism. I can call from anywhere to anywhere using HTTP as my pipe. Of course Java is giving C++ a run for its money, but Java garbage collection is a little flaky. It is not as clean as C++ where you can control the de-allocation of memory. Java does it for you and there is overhead involved. So yes, C++ is kind of falling to the wayside but C++ I am convinced is still a good language to learn if not for its strong typing. The problem is that many people don't want to spend four or five years like I did to finally "get it". As Bertolz said: no one writes C++ as a native, but with a C dialect, or a smalltalk dialect, etc. I think in my heart I am a C++ programmer because I learned it in pieces. And over a long time, it finally made since. But I have rarely ever used polymorphism with C++. Mostly because I don't think that is a good design concept and because you can usually do it using something else. It works against strong cohesion in your module. But I do think you have to learn XML, RDF if you want to keep up. And Python looks better and better to me every day. I will learn Perl but I don't want to. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 04:26:30 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#5e3ab11c-568b-4974-8b98-fc95b0609782 Gilton 2003-10-29T04:26:30Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#8f885b6b-1757-47b2-945e-e694fe923d68 You don't program web pages in C/C++. Generally, the people who aren't full time or going to want to pick up something that they can devote a few hours to and see some results. And those results are on web pages and that makes that group of people a premade online group that is more inclined to learn by trading snippets of code and small experimentation rather than any other means. I'm certain one day there will be no programmers, the last ones will have created the programs that allow anyone to get the results they want by talking to a program that is very good at inquiring about what it needs from the user and going from there. What that user does certainly won't be programming. And that day you will be out of a job. But that date isn't on any calendar I've seen Hypno-Toad Wed, 29 Oct 2003 07:42:48 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#8f885b6b-1757-47b2-945e-e694fe923d68 Hypno 2003-10-29T07:42:48Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#a650f2ba-7f38-4636-8d7c-50e424778ba0 k, sorry 'bout that. Rereading it while I'm awake I barely understood what I meant. Some punctuation might have helped. Being surrounded by fire must be robbing the oxygen to my brain. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:49:08 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#a650f2ba-7f38-4636-8d7c-50e424778ba0 Hypno 2003-10-29T23:49:08Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#3dc53b0d-bfd5-416d-9446-5f3f1dd2c3a5 That day would be very far in the future. As long as there are customers and executives, there will be features. As long as there are vaguely-defined standards and the human ability to misinterpret those standards, there will be bugs. As long as there are features and bugs, there will be us. Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:26:33 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#3dc53b0d-bfd5-416d-9446-5f3f1dd2c3a5 $item.owner.firstName 2003-10-30T00:26:33Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#14d1189f-9739-47d9-ba5f-6bec95265eff Use the language that makes most sense for the project. You need to collect email addresses for company automailers? Write some php/c#/vb.net code. You need a platform-portable gui for cataloging cd/dvd's? Write a Java app. Need a processor-intensive 3d game? Write it in C/C++. Sure, anything could be written in C++, but it doesn't make sense to at times with all of these other time-saving, shortcut languages. And as much as I love C/C++ for its efficiency, I'd appreciate it more if it's syntax was a tad prettier in places. C++ Templates anyone? :) Thu, 30 Oct 2003 05:21:30 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#14d1189f-9739-47d9-ba5f-6bec95265eff Chris 2003-10-30T05:21:30Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#dda32e8b-de51-4a10-9ea0-35bce5eccd98 if you think c++ syntax is bad, what the hell are you doing programming in java? coding java is like thumbwrestling with a mentally retarded teenager. Fri, 31 Oct 2003 04:32:57 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#dda32e8b-de51-4a10-9ea0-35bce5eccd98 $item.owner.firstName 2003-10-31T04:32:57Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#28b003c4-8733-4301-bba7-41ad51a1f490 I believe it's closer than we would like to think. With the massive leaps in computational speed and memory speed happening now (optical processors and super fast super dense storage on atomic level) we will very soon exceed the neccessity for well written efficient programs. It will be the programmers that create the programs that create programs that will be in demand. Just as writers need know nothing about the printing process and directors know little about lighting, make-up or how the film clicks by the shutter. Programs will be created by people who know nothing about computers. Once upon a time I wrote nearly everything in assembly language. It's foolish to do that except on the smallest routines on today's processors. The various and complex rules to keep pipelines full and optimized are overwhelming for a human to do on an entire project and are left now to optimizing compilers. Soon that level will be removed as layers are created to isolate us from the compilation level. 8 TeraFlop processor: http://www.lenslet.com/newsItem.asp?showArchive=&newsId=184 Next memory revolution: http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,83987,00.html Fri, 31 Oct 2003 06:44:46 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#28b003c4-8733-4301-bba7-41ad51a1f490 Hypno 2003-10-31T06:44:46Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#b9bb7b04-b09e-463c-a5e9-55bcf43d9a82 When I was young I once thought I could write a novel that would end all novels. Like everybody would read it and say: "Oh well, I guess the last thing has been said, and the novel is dead." During the seventies, I was not alone in this belief and guess what? We were all wrong. You know why? Because nothing can finalize the human imagination. Language is open ended. And guess what? Programming is language. Programming is design. Will there be stuff where we might crank code by thought? Maybe. But it still requires design. Design comes before coding. I agree that each language has its advantages and disadvantages. I don't know if a language can be invented that will suit everyone. We have all lived through the programming language religious wars. I just refuse to take sides. But I don't think programming or design is ever going away. Programming can be automated; design might be automated, but no matter how high we go(API like) there will be a need for someone to design something. It might be designing the robots who are creating the code. It doesn't stop. Unless we develop something greater than us and according to Bill Joy and Hugo DeGaris(who is trying to build artilect machines with the IQ of 1,000 - they have some machines that have discovered and patents inventions on the level of human beings. Are they conscious? I don't think so) then maybe. But then as Skynet in Terminator, our fates might be decided in a nanosecond. Termination. Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:40:34 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#b9bb7b04-b09e-463c-a5e9-55bcf43d9a82 Gilton 2003-10-31T08:40:34Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#91b2c4ba-4ead-4dd1-9ed6-664fbf530859 Programming is natural. Everyone does it but not everyone does it with computers. We learn to walk be programming our reactions to being off-balance, we are programmed with language, mathematics. We are even programmed socially to accept or reject various concepts. We rarely call this programming but it is. Eventually, this programming will be extended outside ourselves to the world around us. We will train the garage or front door to recognize us and open when we arrive. The fridge will have our most likely desired beverages cold and ready. The temperature will have come out of power-save mode to adjust to what we like. The TV will be waiting with what we want to watch and we will pick from a ready list of what's for dinner. We will program all these things without learning a new language. The computers will have been programmed to understand ours including our individual nuances. At work people will not lean word processors and spreadsheets. These tools will learn their users. People will tell their machines how they want their data arranged sorted, prioritized and viewed. The only programmers will be those that can enhance the underlying systems. No one will write a spreadsheet or a word processor, it will simply be a premade adaptive tool. All of this can be done without AI, so I'm not too worried about Skynet. The only thing to be concerned about is the tremendous gap this will further create in the workforce. Jobs will go from fry-cook to rocket scientist with very little inbetween. Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:20:49 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#91b2c4ba-4ead-4dd1-9ed6-664fbf530859 Hypno 2003-10-31T22:20:49Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#6e08947c-c8a0-4372-8522-7a7a95018fb2 >The C++ tribe here is languishing in relative obscurity compared to the PHP, Python, and Java tribes here at Tribe.net I think it's makeup (webbie / dotcom people more than traditional software engineers), plus the fact that C++ is old enough to no longer generate the enthusiasm and advocacy that the other languages mentioned have. People use C++, they just don't post about it here. In my opinion C++ as it is actually used is not much harder than C, and not that different from Java as it actually used, with the hardest to master differences not being in the languages proper, but in class libraries that differ arbitrarily. The more complex features of C++ are popular on academic (or interview) test questions, but in practice are avoided because a least common denominator has to be used for portability or has been carried over from legacy code. Fri, 09 Jan 2004 23:14:35 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#6e08947c-c8a0-4372-8522-7a7a95018fb2 Pool 2004-01-09T23:14:35Z http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#376744f3-89da-409c-b6d8-100f06f80b34 When C++ came out, it was pretty much the only OO game in town (no one was or is taking Smalltalk or CLOS seriously). Java and to a lesser extent ruby and kludges like python have stolen a lot of thunder; and people can put up with a VM engine under the hood most of the time. Me? I still like programming right next to the metal, so its C++ for me when I'm playing and when I'm working I'll do C++ if the customer can't tell. (Besides my short term contracts love getting a self contained executable of less than 120k that doesn't require any other "environments" and will still run on OSs as old as Win95.) My biggest problem? How to continue to improve. Where do I go to bounce questions around? Is there other code I can look at for inspiration? I've read most of the books, but can't find a community out there. I recently took a short piece of code to a Masters in Software program, and had it read in a code workshop. Only one guy could read it at all, and nobody really understood it. (It was a templitized single & doubly linked list set of classes.) The instructor's narrative: "I can read C++, but obviously this code is very dense because its trying to create foundation code to build other things on top of." Sigh. The funny thing was, except for one other C (embedded) submission; everyone else submitted code in fringe languages: Lisp, Smalltalk, Ruby; while admitting that their day jobs were in java. I'll point out the other big problem with C++: libraries. There aren't really any. I've spent more than half a decade writing good networking/io/buffer libraries of my own, and I'm still not done. And lets not talk about STL--the generic programming guys are in their own universe for how they actually "implement" solutions, though I really like templates. I think C++ will eventually be co-opted by something else. Kind of like how C was co-opted. Derek Wed, 21 Jan 2004 06:16:54 GMT http://CPP.tribe.net/thread/3d8c2995-1fe1-4e76-822e-6fee11cfbe24#376744f3-89da-409c-b6d8-100f06f80b34 John 2004-01-21T06:16:54Z