In this blog post by Raymond Chen, I find it very interesting and also very comforting that they (MS) actually considers the case where their MSDN examples are going to be taken and translated to a myriad of languages beyond the world of C/C++. In fact, according to Ramond, far more people use languages other than C/C++ to create applications for Windows. Do I believe that? Maybe. If you consider the huge number of Visual Basic programmers out there, then it seems that this statement has some merit. I know that we Delphi programmers are certainly included in that calculation as well. I mean, we've all done it. We've all looked up the documentation on some Windows API and took the example code and translated portions of it to Delphi.
As a side note, posts like this also seem to be fodder for the various “glory-seekers” to chime in a pick apart his statements with petty little pedantic tirades on how much more they know about the C/C++ idiosyncrasies. Just look at the comments regarding the realization that ZeroMemory won't work if the structures have IEEE floating point fields, or if some system uses a value other than 0 to represent a NULL. I call them “glory seekers” because it seems that their only goal is to somehow get their “props” by pointing out the little edge conditions in someone's statements. Good for you... you are a programming god... meanwhile the rest of us will take comfort in the true intent of what Raymond was saying.
But wait! I thought Raymond Chen was a god?
ReplyDeleteDemi-God then?
How about ulta-uber-smarter-than-you geek.
Careful. Raymond's exact words were "a significant percentage," not "far more people." I suspect the majority of people who do Windows development do it with C/C++, but I also suspect Raymond is correct in that a significant percentage (not less than 5%) do it with languages *other* than C/C++.
ReplyDeleteWhat's interesting is that, in the VS2005 help, nearly all the examples are in VB and C#. This is of course due to the late support for C++ in .NET. But it is interesting to note the trend.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I for one, think that it is interesting to discuss the intricacies of C++, because it is such a complex language, and because knowing these details can sometimes make the difference between code that works and code that doesn't (due to a subtle bug). I personally feel that a developer should be an expert in their programming language.
Taking people to task for pointing out factual inaccuracies is a form of glory seeking.
ReplyDeleteA recent newsgroup post I read says it best (if the poster wants to claim ownership, he's welcome to it <G>): No one understands C++. Even the compilers are just taking their best guess.
ReplyDeleteI find it funny that you're complaining about commenters warning about unportable/faulty C/C++ assumptions on a blog that usually has posts warning against undocumented or faulty assumptions of Windows on a Windows/C/C++ blog.
ReplyDeleteasdf,
ReplyDeleteTo me those comments were beyond the scope and the spirit of the original post. If it were a discussion specifically about C++, then those comments would have been warranted. However, they just appeared to be grand-standing about things which were not at all what that post was about.
There will always be someone trying to prove Raymond wrong (at least in that blog), I, as a regular reader of that blog, find that normal
ReplyDelete