Future of unmanaged C++ ?

[Johan Jooris]

I can imagine that C++ will remain to have its place in a special kind of
applications (device drivers, operating systels, ...)

But what is the future of unmanaged C++ for 'normal' applications (e.g.
distributed database applications, xml webservice applications)
Can't C# be used for real time applications (statefull windows services with
persistor functionalities) at all ?
What is the pro's opinion about this ?

Thanks !

 

[Brooke]

Do you just plan on using Windows? Have you tried managed C++? It's a mess,
better off using C# if you want to develop managed code. But, unmanaged code
is far faster. Plus C and C++ is used on all OS's, very fast, and there is
ton's of code available to do just about anything you can imagine.

 

[Ian]

I can imagine that C++ will remain to have its place in a special kind of
applications (device drivers, operating systels, ...)

But what is the future of unmanaged C++ for 'normal' applications (e.g.
distributed database applications, xml webservice applications)
Can't C# be used for real time applications (statefull windows services with
persistor functionalities) at all ?

On UNIX??

Ian

 

[Johan Jooris]

Ian,

since we've chosen to develop our applications making use of a sql server
database, we are already stuck to the windows platform.
I have the impression that MS pushes development towards managed code. I
should have rephrasen the question to: what is the future of unmanaged C++
on windows platform ?
So, I'm asking myself, is it a good strategy to longer invest in unmanaged
C++ code ?
Shouldn't we leave C++ at all on windows platform, and move towards C# ?

Thanks !

Johan

no, on windows platform since we develop applications with a sql server
databse

 

[Rapscallion]

So, I'm asking myself, is it a good strategy to longer invest in unmanaged
C++ code ?
Shouldn't we leave C++ at all on windows platform, and move towards C# ?

And, is vendor lock-in good or bad for us?

 

[Calum Grant]

Ian,

since we've chosen to develop our applications making use of a sql server
database, we are already stuck to the windows platform.
I have the impression that MS pushes development towards managed code. I
should have rephrasen the question to: what is the future of unmanaged C++
on windows platform ?
So, I'm asking myself, is it a good strategy to longer invest in unmanaged
C++ code ?

It seems that Microsoft is decoupling .net from Longhorn.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/26/dotnet_longhorn/

My guess is that apps written on .net are much bloatier than those
written natively. Anyone got any experience of this?

Shouldn't we leave C++ at all on windows platform, and move towards C# ?

I would certainly favour C# instead of mangled (sorry, I mean managed)
C++. Personally I think that mangling the language is going too far.
Library support and templates for managed pointers would probably be
more palatable to most C++ developers. Most C++ developers are used to
programming without GC, the two paradigms are different. I also favour
portable code.

Calum

 

[Manfred]

My guess is that apps written on .net are much bloatier than those
written natively. Anyone got any experience of this?

At University we should develop a small parser for textfiles which goes
through the file and picks every word it finds and inserts it in a
Hashtable.
We got a file to test our program which was 160 MB big.

I wrote the program in C++ and needed 23 seconds to parse this file.
i wrote the hashtable, the parser and the linkedlist all by myself for
later statistical evalutaion.

A similar program which was written in C# needed 75 seconds for the same
file.

You see the difference

Manfred

 

[Andrew McDonagh]

At University we should develop a small parser for textfiles which goes
through the file and picks every word it finds and inserts it in a
Hashtable.
We got a file to test our program which was 160 MB big.

I wrote the program in C++ and needed 23 seconds to parse this file.
i wrote the hashtable, the parser and the linkedlist all by myself for
later statistical evalutaion.

A similar program which was written in C# needed 75 seconds for the same
file.

You see the difference

Manfred

granted C++ apps tend to be faster than C#/Java etc. but we should keep
in mind its just as easy to write slow inefficient apps in C++ as other
languages.

Your similar program may not have been written in an optimized way - or
may have...

Can you tell us your impressions of the design quality of both apps WRT
performance optimisation?