Re: [boost] Report from Berlin C++ Standards Committee meeting

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-13 10:56:56

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