On Feb 24, 9:14 pm, Larry Bugbee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Feb 21, 10:22 am, Nicola Musatti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Feb 21, 6:31 pm, Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > The main reason why C++ has declined in usage is because almost > > > everything of practical value is optional. > > No, disagree. > > > The main reason why C++ has declined in usage is because it never got > > the kind of corporate marketing enjoyed by Java and C#. > > I'm inclined to disagree for two reasons. C++ is a very complex > language. Java (and the later C#) less so. Couple that with reduced > debugging time due to garbage collection and fewer pointer problems, a > lot of us decided a factor of 2x in personal productivity was worth > it. Runtime was initially an impediment, and still is for desktop > applications, but the trade was worth it.
While this was probably true towards the end of the nineties, given the standard library and Boost I find it hard to believe that a similar increase can be accounted for just in terms of language differences. > Corporate marketing, and corporate attention in general, saw to it > that Java was well equipped with libraries and frameworks addressing > enterprise application needs. ...but the *big* reason Java won over C+ > + is because your application became stable sooner. ...with arguably > fewer problems later. The number of libraries you get "out of the box" appear to me as more likely explanations for the productivity increase. > And the migration to Python is due in large part because of an > additional factor of 3-4x in personal productivity (over Java). > Improvements in runtime performance wouldn't hurt, but for many > applications that's not an issue. (If optional data typing were > offered, Python's penetration in the enterprise space would be even > higher, and I suspect there would be performance gains as well.) This I found less hard to believe. Python is more expressive than Java and usually requires less code for the same task. Moreover tha availability of libraries is comparable. Cheers, Nicola Musatti -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
