Peter Dimov wrote:
This is a pretty common view, but C++ has been missing essential standard libraries for more than ten years, and it still competes with Java.
The places where C++ competes are shrinking rapidly from what I'm seeing in the 'real-world'. It's a combination of factors including faster machines with more memory, better performance for scripted/interpreted languages, lack of education (schools don't teach C++ as much), and lack of libraries. More worrisome, some places where you would think C++ would dominate (high performance web backends, for example) it simply doesn't compete because of a lack of libraries. Java doesn't dominate in the development of web-backends b/c it's a better language -- it's all about the libraries and tools built on top... All this said, C++ isn't going anywhere -- there are millions and millions of lines of C++ in existing projects that will be maintained for decades to come. And in some domains the performance advantages of C++ are still important.
C++ simply doesn't play by the marketing rule that whoever has the more checkboxes wins. It doesn't even have garbage collection! An automatic loss, you'd think.
Of course C++ has garbage collection -- it's one library Java just doesn't have ;-) http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/ Jeff