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From the Editors: C++ moves front and center


By SD Times Editorial Board
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August 31, 2012 —  (Page 1 of 3)
Is 2012 the Year of C++? It looks to be. When SD Times launched in 2000, everyone was talking about Java. Not long after, thanks to the then-brand-new .NET Framework, everyone was talking about C#: inspired by Java, but with some C++ thrown in.

New languages have their moment in the sun. JavaScript, Ruby, Visual Basic, you name it. All of these languages, of course, are still very popular today.

Through it all, C++ has remained the sine qua non of modern object-oriented languages, in part due to its genuine foothold in standards (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22/WG21), in part due to its long history, in part due to its ubiquity in commercial development, and in part because it’s a solid language that continues to evolve.

One can be a fan of C++ and also recognize its shortcomings. The language is complex. It can be cryptic and hard for humans to read; it’s never easy to come up to speed on a large C++ codebase. The language doesn't play well in managed environments, and coders and testers are responsible for trapping a lot of bad behavior. C++ isn’t Basic.

We are impressed with the changes appearing in the new C++11 standard released last November, as described by Larry O’Brien in “Building blocks for the future.” (p. 47). The work with type inference, lambda functions, range-based for loops and concurrency is solid. We don’t expect compiler and tool makers to have trouble adapting their software to handle the new C++11 features. Developers may take some time to understand and begin adopting those features, such as lambda functions. But coders will embrace them, once they understand them.

New languages appear all the time, often with excellent ideas. Scala is a language that’s gaining traction, for example. Other languages slip; we don’t see much ALGOL being written these days. Many continue plugging along within their niches, like Fortran or Lisp, or with an incredibly loyal constituency, like the triumvirate of Perl, PHP and Python. And some languages, like HTML5, defy easy categorization.


Related Search Term(s): agile, C++

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