quote:Original post by _vizual_ Schools still teach C/C++ as the primary language in degree programs and that is what graduate students know. Application development proceeds with C/C++ due to the simple fact that it is the defacto language in which developers are comfortable with developing in.
Actually it depends on what schools. The top schools in the world for comp sci and software engineering don''t teach C++ at all.
What schools are you referring to? I went to a top-20 US school and they were teaching C++ (along with some of the others you mentioned) up until a couple of years ago. C++ is still a de-facto standard in Universities in the US as far as I know.
I haven''t read the whole thread, but allow me to post my 2¢.
* C++ will not die, because so many programs use it that will need maintaining that the language will be around for a long time
* C++''s usage in the application market will (and is) tremendously diminishing due to Java and C#
* A language is not slow or fast. C is not faster than C# or C++ is not faster than Ruby or Common Lisp or O''Caml: some language implementations are faster than other. For example, the O''Caml native compiler is an extremely good one and it produces code that is as fast and often faster than code generated by GCC. But a language has no speed, a language is a means to express a solution to a problem. The fact that C++ is considered a fast language is because much work went into building strong and fast compilers
* C# implementations will need to include modern features. C# doesn''t even have an interactive interpreter for God''s sake! Many, many, many languages have that (Python, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, O''Caml, SML, Erlang, Forth, Haskell, Smalltalk, etc.) This is, in my opinion an extremely important feature to learn a language, it allows interactive testing of language features
* About Sony or Nintendo not using C# because it''s a Microsoft language, give them time. First, there are two open source projects that try to bring .Net and C# to Linux and other platforms (Mono and dotGNU): they may use those or roll their own, the ECMA PDF is freely available.
* C# does have a improved productivity over C++. You need not to worry about pointers, memory allocation, etc. I say, the higher level a language is, the more productive it is (Lisp, Smalltalk, Python top my chart of productivity)
* The thing about "C# is never gonna catch on Linux", well you have before you a Linux guy who swore he''d never use C# ever when he first saw it, and who is now a big fan of Mono and C#. Mono/C# allows Windows .NET developers to become almost instantly productive on Linux (which is not so much the case with C or C++) and Linux developers who learn Mono (like myself) will be able to put .Net/C# on their resume. It may not become the most popular language, C will probably (unfortuneatly) keep that spot. But C# has much more to attract Linux developers than functional languages or Python or Smalltalk: it has a familiar syntax (no meaningful whitespace that so many dislike).
* I hope the future BIG language includes more modern features: a Hindley-Milner type-checking system with type inference for example (or dynamic typing with a soft typing checker), an all-expression language, simpler syntax (see Lisp or Smalltalk), the possibility to send code to a function (anonymous functions or blocks of codes like Smalltalk or Ruby).
That''s pretty much what I had to say. Good night.
I haven''t read the whole thread, but here''s my two cents: The world of programming stretches further than desktop PC''s and Microsoft. 90% of all software is still written for dedicated hardware. Think of your microwave and car radio. C and C++ (the latter may be not so) are still the best languages to use for systems that don''t have tonnes of memory available for an OS and need low level access to the hardware.
