Re: Visual C++ wont autcomplete?

In article news:<aaiwi.885$924.781@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David Ching
wrote:
It is true that I disdain the "full power" of the C++ language and view most
advanced usages of templates as unreadable and unsupportable. My apps (and
indeed most MFC apps that I've seen) don't use these and do rather well.

You make a good point about "modern" C++ language features ... I don't think
I've ever written a template in production code ... Andrei Alexandrescu's
"Modern C++ Design" is a fascinating, humbling, and visionary book, but I
wouldn't dream of using any of his ideas in a project that was to be maintained
by ordinary mortals.

OTOH those "modern" features are used in the implementation of libraries --
including the ISO C++ standard runtime library -- that make C++ much easier and
much safer to use than the old legacy C libraries that are the main alternative
(MFC notwithstanding).

Much of the library code /could/ be written without templates, but it would be
harder to write/maintain ... and might therefore not exist.

Certainly if you go to CodeProject and download some control, you can use
the control without Boost or even STL. That is because Windows programmers
(at least a certain class of them) don't embrace these things and still in
fact use things like BOOL instead of bool.

GUI code -- and MFC GUI code in particular -- probably has less need for
"modern" features than domain-specific application back-end logic.

For us, it doesn't matter what other useless eccentricity the new standard
has support for.

I would say that it is a VERY big mistake to dismiss modern C++ developments as
useless eccentricities. These features are core to the long-term success of the
language.

In fact, during the thread when I asked for a compiler switch to assume char
== wchar_t so our Windows apps could support Unicode with no additional
effort, I was repeatedly told that such a thing was impossible due to some
assumptions that had been there since Day 1. That was when I realized that
there is no way for C++ to retain its title as the premiere language for
Windows apps. To put it nicely, the C++ committee has other goals. To put
it bluntly, they've lost their way even more than MS has with their IDE's.

That's hardly fair. I don't think this has anything to do with the goals of the
C++ committee.

Mistakes made at day 1 (and I think that means the mid-1970s when the first C
runtime library was being built) can have a lasting effect that is very
difficult to break free of. It's implicit throughout C and C++ that
sizeof(char)==1. You'd break a lot of code if you changed that.

Anyway, MS can abandon any dev tool it wants to (remember J++?) but still be
in business.

If Sun hadn't forced MS to abandon J++ we'd probably never have had .NET (and
the world would be a better place -- not that .NET isn't at least as good as
java, just that the world doesn't need two competing P-code systems).

Cheers,
Daniel.



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: C# and C++ Past, Present, Future :: Software Engineer
    ... i know) easy to write client/server apps, n-tier apps, etc. ... You mentioned templates... ... to be addressed with generics in version 2 of the language. ... able to blend C# and C++, getting the best out of the Java design. ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp)
  • Re: Default Page Size
    ... Find your Normal template (probably in the Templates folder in the Office ... folder in Apps). ... change the paper size in Page Setup. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: Web development with Python 3.1
    ... Telling Django's template loader where to look for templates is just a matter of configuration, so using templates you can segment your whole project in small, possibly reusable apps - then in another project where you need the same features but with a totally different presentation, it's just a matter of writing project-specific templates. ... Now wrt/ "why having a distinct templating language", ... But Django has it's own template system, which from experience get the job done, and the overall qualities and features of the whole framework are IMHO enough to justify learning it's templating language. ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: PROBLEM: 12.1 version of Word 2008 will not open WinWord .doc files?
    ... by the above MS apps (including the templates they're created from), ... I can't recreate the problem on the systems that I have access to. ... have I had any user reports of that occurring. ...
    (microsoft.public.mac.office.word)
  • Re: Hello Everyone!
    ... Yes, but the same is true for 64-bit Linux, ... limitation of the operating system, ... How come that I can run old 16-bit windows apps in wine on a 64bit ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)