usa2k
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| reply to Bobcat
Re: [Chat] C++, Thinking out loud ...
said by Bobcat  :What are these kids learning in school now a days? I'll let you know when I'm a 'Kid' again! 
I know lots of the course subjects simply will prove I can learn, and teach core principles. At 49, maybe I might be able to find a more expanded level to my inner 'Kid'? (Thinking big never hurts!)
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| reply to drew
Borland lost its standing with me back in 1992. At the time, I was a big fan of Turbo C++ on Winidows. However, they completely botched the shift to 32-bit NT. They blamed everyone else for their products sucking or just not working on NT, including developers who were "expecting the stability of the 16-bit world too soon." Puh. Leeze.
I evaluated Delphi back in like 1995. It was interesting but, frankly, Pascal has always been too geeky for large-scale adoption in the business world. Yes, it was cool (I had Pascal on my Apple ][+ and my first XT), but cool alone doesn't sell in a world where businesses want plug-and-play convenience. And, I've run into a few too many Delphi fanboys who rave about it the same way the Clarion Kool-Aid Crowd did in the early and mid-1990s: the product is 100% perfection and does everything from mundane database tasks to freshening breath, finding Amelia Earhart, even making Jesus appear on demand with an easy-to-create template.
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drew
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| I've done stuff in VB 6, VB .NET (from 2003 on wards), C# .NET (since VS 2008), and Delphi 5/2007 in terms of desktop applications.
VB6 had that "I can do some simple task in like 30 seconds" feel, VB .NET confused the hell out of me the first time I played with it, but now it makes sense. C# is like the bastard child of VB .NET and C++ which I love. Delphi has its moments, but the problem is the community. There is none!
Perfect example: why do real developers have stuff like MSDN bookmarked and other resources when our Delphi devs all have »delphi.about.com as their home page? I mean SERIOUSLY.
Why do I hit F1 in VS and immediately get what I need when I hit F1 in Delphi and it says, "No topic found!" Great. Thanks Delphi! Oh, and don't get me started about the reliance of Delphi developers on 3rd party components.
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| The lack of support you're running into is pretty much the same thing that undid Borland in the early 1990s. When they couldn't get stuff to work under NT, they turned their backs on officially supporting products across the board. They pulled all their employees off CompuServe and left it to users to fend for themselves. Bug reports only were begrudingly addressed if PC Week ripped them a new one over something that was considered a show-stopper.
Philippe Kahn was on a crusade for several years to make Borland "The Computer Associates of the PC world." He got his wish.
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drew
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| Have you worked for/with Delphi developers recently? Every single one of them is in denial.
Delphi is dead in the US, and dying quickly over in Europe & Asia where it's been stronger due to anti-Microsoft positioning over there.
My favorite line from the head of Dev here: "... But it compiles into NATIVE code, it's so much faster!" This absolutely would be true (to a degree) if the code they were writing was even close to efficient. My second favorite is: "It took me an hour and a half to install the .NET framework." A big fat  to them.
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drew
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clubs: | My apologies for taking this so far off-topic.
Learn C++, if you can figure out pointers, you'll be fine. I still can't. |
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usa2k
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| Re: [Chat] C++, Thinking out loud ...
I am enjoying all the insights into the languages in use out there
I keep reading, taking a break, reading ..., checking here , reading, ...
C# I've overlooked with all the LINUX viewpoints I encountered from programmers I've met in person. My world view is changing to embrace the world in all the areas that prove viable.
It would seem in C++, to thoroughly learn the Libraries will teach good coding examples, and make life easier. Once I get the basics, a book on STL is likely worth pursuing.
Something that teaches me while using Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition will likely get me farther when I take such a College class. I did not know until recently there was a free download for educational use until recently. Even the College SQL class uses mostly MS ACCESS from what I've researched.
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drew
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clubs: | SQL class using MS Access? Stay away, far away! |
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usa2k
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1 edit |
That was my old thinking!
I've had to use a MS ACCESS application, and it was flawed and a pain!
Still, to reform the natives, you need to speak their language.
And such missionary work ultimately destroys their bliss in the process. |
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drew
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clubs: | Access is a poor place to start anyone off IMO. |
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| reply to usa2k
You can download Express editions of VB, VC#, VC++ and SQL Server for free direct from MS. They lack the advanced/enterprise features, but you can create a wide range of fully functioning, highly capable applications with them. MS has extensive, free, online support, learning and community resources, along with Just Googling.
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| reply to drew
Re: [Chat] C++, Thinking out loud ...
said by drew :Have you worked for/with Delphi developers recently? Every single one of them is in denial.
No, I haven't worked with any. I did interview one last year for an ASP.NET project last year and he sure was a trip. His resume had VB/C# but every question he answered had some plug for how awesome Delphi is and how I'd be better off scrapping VB for it. Needless to say, he was out of the running 70 seconds into the interview. It was the Clarion Syndrome I mentioned in another post.
said by drew : "It took me an hour and a half to install the .NET framework."
Is he one of these types? 
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drew
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| You obviously know how easy it is to manage users/groups and in general, act with the system in .NET languages -- we have a custom installer app that's taken far too long in Delphi because of trying to find the "right components" to do it for us. All because "We don't want to install the framework."
I don't get the joke about that "type" but the image is hilarious.
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modemslayer
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| reply to usa2k
C++ was my bread and butter for over 10 years. I used to say "you can have my pointers when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers", but I've sinced changed my philosophy.
The .NET platform is solid, and after 6-ish years of working with it daily, I'd never go back even if I could. I'd like to think I was an above average C++ programmer, but I spent many years hunting down memory/resource leaks in others' code with tools like BoundsChecker. The old saying of "C++ is a loaded gun pointed to your head by default" is a true saying.
Ahh the old days of BoundsChecker - You had suppression libaries to supress warnings of all the memory leaks in Windows, and all the memory leaks of the MS libraries, and third party tools, and so on, before you even got to the memory leaks in your own code. All of that goes away with .NET.
And now you can take a VB programmer, and once you teach him/her OOP, you'll get 99% of the power you had from C++ in a language that's easy enough for my kids to understand. Languages like C# and VB.NET are now true peers. We used to tease VB developers, but no longer.
Now I work on large systems with teams of programmers and get reliability I never dreamed of back in C++'s heyday. Systems where you don't need to reboot the server every week or have teams of people hunting down all the leaks. It's a fair trade for pointers in my book |
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1 edit | reply to drew
said by drew :I don't get the joke about that "type" but the image is hilarious.
Someone who is hell bent on making something work, no matter how impractical, pointless or absurd it is.
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drew
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clubs: | Oh ok, yeah. That's him to a t. |
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| reply to modemslayer
I found C++ to be more of a pain in the backside for creating client apps than plain C was. A week to write the app, a month to just step through WinMain. C++ was better for writing back-end and middle-tier process code, where you didn't have UI events hosing you with obscure reentrancy or threading issues.
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modemslayer
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| I always liked it for the client side. True, it's more abstract, but it's not that much harder to debug if you have the procedures in place. We won a PC Magazine Editor's Choice award in 1997-ish for a pure client app written in C++. One of the best projects I've ever worked on, and it was strictly a client app.
I think the power of OOP (resuable/reduced code/etc.) over vanilla C was well worth a bit of extra effort debugging. |
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| Most of what I write involves database interaction. Getting async ODBC calls to behave in C++ clients was not an especially joy-filled undertaking...especially since every new driver version invariably broke everything. Herding cats was a breeze compared to debugging that mess.
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modemslayer
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| More of a fault of the way the ODBC libraries were written than a fault in the C++ language itself. Most of Windows was written in C, and it wasn't always easy bending it to C++.
The new .NET generic provider model (starting with framework 2.0?) makes DB access a thing of beauty. ODBC was ugly even on a good day. |
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