This should be interesting

Richard Hale Shaw is writing some blog entries about moving away from C++ (to .Net). But then he would say that, wouldn’t he. His job includes providing courses for people learning .Net… ;)

Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be an interesting series of articles, especially given his current views on C++…

I think Richard’s being a bit harsh to say that C++ is just a procedural language with an OO retro-fit. Sure, you can write procedural code in C++, but then you can do the same in most OO languages if you try hard enough. In fact, just this morning I commented over on CodeBetter.com on how the new ParameterizedThreadStart() delegate simply encourages procedural code and a lack of abstraction…

I find the digs about Java and C# being C++ without the “routinely unused features” amusing, especially since both languages are now trying to add in support for generic programming (and, from a C++ point of view, both are doing it pretty poorly) and the fact that .Net’s object cleanup model actually seems to be MORE complex than C++’s once everyone realised that memory wasn’t the only thing that deterministic destruction was good for managing… ;)

I’m especially interested in hearing about the “myth” of C++’s greater power, control and performance. Especially since “the power and control of C++ are a myth, and the features that give you that power and control are…” (hmm, either he’s missing an “allegedly” in there somewhere or he’s confused himself… ;) )

I, personally, don’t tend to find myself debugging at 3am but I’ve found that it’s unit testing rather than language features (or a lack of them) that has been the biggest help in keeping the code doing what it should be doing. I’m also a bit confused as to how those of us who write in C++ could prevent “the rest of us” shipping solutions to customers… In my opinion, programmers can write crap code in any language and sometimes it seems that making a language more accessible to more people just leads to more crap code being written in it, rather than less…

So, anyway, enough of my nitpicking, I’m on the edge of my seat here waiting for the next instalment. Lets hope that once he gets into this Richard can cover why .Net TCP/IP server apps seem to be limited to a small number of concurrent connections…