In my own point of view what suites you best is what you should use.

whichever will make you succeed in your career will always be the best for you.

Good luck to all :p

Yessssss!

I find your argument about ‘old school’ programmers amusing. I am one of the younger programmers where I work, but I started in computers very early. I tought myself a few languages and attended college where I learned others.

I am open to new ideas. I work with other fresh minds and most of them are all about .NET and C#. Fact is, as I talk with them about languages and programming, it has become painfully obvious that they aren’t polished programmers. They do not know how to write tight code. They also seem to be clueless how to fully leverage C++. I blame poor teachers for this. My C++ teacher in college was terrible. IMO, most programming teachers teach like math teachers - unable to create a compelling real-world example of why you should use specific tools and why to use them a certain way.

These C# proponents I work with have decent troubleshooting but not excellent. These are sharp guys with holes in their knowledge. Nothing personal to them or the other C# proponents, but C++ and the people that are skilled in it just seem to produce the best, fastest, most well though-out code. As someone else pointed out in this thread, C# is for beginner and intermediate programmers. IMO, it’s the programmers that are intermediate that think they are polished that seem to tout C# as the better language.

While I am making a case, the argument about standard libraries doesn’t make sense to me. It makes sense if you reinvent the wheel over and over again. Any programmer is going to make a set of their own libraries they use from program to program. Even in C#. While one may spend some extra time initially building some libs to make C++ friendlier for quick programming, the end game for a decent programmer is similar productivity for new programs. As a for instance, if I am writing a new C++ program that interfaces with XML, I don’t code an XML class all over again. I use the one I already made. I’d rather have my C++ libs than C# without my libs.

At the end of the day, there are too many technical things to do and not enough great programmers to go around. This argument ends up as academic. C# is here to stay and C++ is here to stay. Use the tool that matches your skill set + target hardware and enjoy bringing programs to life.

-G

But you have to be a really bad programmer to write an C++ App that is slower than an C# app.

And why not take the best from both? Vala for example have the same Syntax than C# but it doesn´t use .NET.

The Source gets converted into C and then gets compile by your favourite C-Compiler (for me its GCC)

So you have automated Memory management, easy syntax and all the other pussy stuff but still have the great speed

http://live.gnome.org/Vala (also take a look at the Wikipedia article)

And you can´t compare C++ with C# in every case. C# have a big library behind it named .NET with which you are much more productive than with ANSI C++

But for example with Qt you can write C++ apps 1000x faster and with less code than with C# and .NET and you dont lose and ms of speed.

So if someone really says he have to use C# becease of advantage XY than he just dont know how to compare (99% Windows users)

1. Coming from C++, I could say that C# is much better in my case. I am very productive using it. I could write apps faster than using C++. And I can deliver it to the client fast.
2. Garbage collection is a big plus.
3. Cross platform… Yes… I wrote a C# app and was able to use it in Opensuse Linux (Mono) w/o any recompilation… That’s a very very hugeeeeeeee plusssss….
4. Speed… it always depends on the algorithm/flow created by the programmer… I have a case wherein my boss always told me that C# is a lot slow because it relies on .NET, they have their C++ app and boasting that I could never beat it’s fastness… It has lots of calculation + some hardware interactions. and after three days of development, we have a benchmark: their app takes 15seconds, and my C# app takes 1.3seconds… after that, I never heard a single word from them on that day :D

Speed isn’t everything

More like soccer vs jet-pack-soccer.

I don’t necessarily mean this as a reference to C# vs C++, I don’t know C# at all. But it works as an metaphor for other things such as DOS vs Linux. Where for one example, linux is more stable but there is no undelete.

I have read your selfintroduction with big interest. Especially, because I have studied in Kassel, too. But only as Mechanical Engineer
I want to start with parallel programming in C++ with OpenMP. But at the moment I am not sure how to start best.
Have you any advice for me (literature, infos on www - beside your blog :), etc.)?
All information is wellcome - even in German.

Best regards,

Klaus Stein

I mean the talk about Programming Languages.

Take a look at Google. On there Anrdoid stuff they use Java

On there Web-Platform they use Python. Chrome OS/Chrome/Chromium is wirtten in C with GTK+

Nokia uses C++ with Qt

What do we see? The matter is not the Language. Its the guy who writes the language.

Desktop Envirionments like KDE and GNOME even now turn to use JavaScript and also Windows (in case of his huge copy_from_other progress) starts to do so.

Its not just “A Business will use C# becease they can develop faster with less problems” or something like that.

And Desktop Environment works better if its written in C or C++

Small fancy eye-candy games that you play for 5 Minutes to calm down in breaks are maybe better written in JavaScript

btw. C# runs very very very good on Linux (http://www.mono-project.com/Compatibility) the GNOME Project uses more and more C# (Banshee, Tomboy, Beagle, F-Spot, GBrainy)

With Mono you´re able to run C# Applications on Windows, Mac OS X (in case of that its just a cheap Unix system) and Linux

Maybe C# is not a bad language at all but the performance boost you get with C++ is just too high

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32q/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=csharp&lang2=gpp

if someone think it worths it…… why not

But with toolkits like Qt, C++ is defenetly the better choice