"Jeff Garland" <jeff@crystalclearsoftware.com> wrote
Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote:
"Jeff Garland" <jeff@crystalclearsoftware.com> wrote
At the end of the story, it may be that the committee can never do enough because languages like Java have libraries that are so extensive and so deeply funded that C++ can never compete with volunteer labor.
The major problem IMO is that the "volunteer labor" inevitably prefers development for fun to commercially-justified development. This drives inovation, but hurts competition. Where are sockets, database access, etc.?
Well, I suppose. In the cases you mention, I think these are just harder problems. These are hard enough that it's best to have a group and groups are harder than single programmers. That said, these are in the pipeline :-)
Right, in the pipeline... just 8 years after Boost was started :-( OTOH, we do have two (!) great regular expression libraries... Can you imagine something like this happenning to Java or C#? IMHO, it's not about not having enough libraries. It's just about not having those particular libraries that are considered most important by the corporate world. The problem is that C++ and, let's say, Java exist in two different dimensions. Java is a product of commercial world, so in the commercial world it is playing on its own territory. Java is developed to be commercially successfull. C++ (at it's current state) is a totaly different animal. It's mostly being developed by the non-commercial entities, like the standard committee, open source movement, etc. So it almost looks like a volonteer research project. And as such, there is a great amount of inovation, but not a lot of ability to compete in the commercial world. Open source is just designed to deliver certain kind of libraries, but not another... So, in the corporate world, I think, C++ is rapidly loosing it's ground. It is still strong, but mostly because of huge amount of legacy code. A lot of new development is being started in either C# or Java. This is a shame, IMO. I do believe that C++ is a much better language... Interestingly, I think recently C++ received some boost from the commercial world. This happened when MSFT (for whatever reason) decided to revamp their C++ compiler. Just try to imagine where C++ community would be now without VC7.1/8.0... I think both inovation and commercial development are equally important. C++ currently has a lot of inovation, but that's it. Because of this it's loosing the competition. The only way out IMO is to somehow exploit whatever commercial interest in C++ there exist out there. I have no idea how to achieve this and whether it is possible at all, but if this doesn't happen we will all need to switch to C# or Java (at least to earn our living) in not so distant future :-( Regards, Arkadiy