a pre-beginner's question: what is the pros and cons of .net, compared to ++

[Sean Hederman]

Hi Sean,



Sure, and with the "excellent COM interop" you outline below, it should
not be a problem to write ALL the applications in .NET

Yes, but why? Why toss all that existing code down the drain in order to
make it easier to code a product you already have?

No, it's the other way round. The hype of .NET is that it does not rely on
COM and the registry. What this thread has proved is that not only is it
inextricably linked to COM, but that Microsoft's own product teams have
been incapble (or unwilling) to migrate.

I don't know who told you that .NET was completely independent of COM, but I
don't ever remember being told that. You can write applications that don't
directly call COM, but I don't ever recall anything saying that at no point
would COM or the OS be used to perform the actual work.

It seems to me that the "real" programmers at Microsoft (flagship lines)
actually AGREE with me that C++ is still "more powerful" and "faster" than
.NET - that's all I was saying.

Not neccesarily, as noted before, they could just be unwilling to throw away
hundreds of millions of dollars of existing code. I expect you'll see more
and more products coming out with more and more .NET support. First the
API's to access them will become .NETified, and gradually so will the core.

PS. I'd like to apologize for the angry tone in my previous post. I was
irritated by something else, and took it out on you. Didn't follow my "save
and edit rule" :-(

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Makes sense. You do have to ask yourself, however, how many big-name
flagship products have been released in .NET so far? When Visual C++ 5.0
and 6.0 were released, every big-name vendor grabbed a copy and released
products instantly based on them.

Were those products which previously hadn't used C/C++ though, or was
it just that they were adapted to use the new features? There's a big
difference.

.NET has been around for ages now (I remember the betas), and yet hardly
anyone in the big leagues is showing any interest. From what I can tell
most of the interest is from the VB6/Student market.

A lot of it is in the web app market rather than shrink-wrapped
software - there's also a lot of vertical market apps being written, I
believe.

As it happens, the company I work for *does* sell a shrink-wrapped
product which is largely written in .NET. I won't name them (in this
post at least), but the product is doing well.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Nick,

Most of the software written each year is not written for commercial
products. It is written by IT departments inside companies. These folks
never were big on C++ because of the high costs of maintenance. There are
10 developers in this market for every one in commercial software.

And they have switched to .Net in droves. Many organizations that had
switched to Java have switched back.

Millions of lines a year in .Net. That's success.

I agree with everything you say here.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Sean,

Yes, but why? Why toss all that existing code down the drain in order to
make it easier to code a product you already have?

Simple. It's called "leading by example"

I don't know who told you that

You must have managed to avoid some of the hype better than I

Seriously though, I'm glad this is clear now. It's something I had not
understood properly.

Not neccesarily, as noted before, they could just be unwilling to throw away
hundreds of millions of dollars of existing code. I expect you'll see more
and more products coming out with more and more .NET support. First the
API's to access them will become .NETified, and gradually so will the core.

Maybe at that point it will be worth taking seriously, but my guess is
that the "big guns" programmers at Microsoft are thinking EXACTLY the
same as I am

New MS employee: "Hey, let's write Word 2003 in .NET! Dude it Rocks!"
Chief Architect: "Don't be silly!"

Actually, these senior Microsoft guys are pretty smart. For example the
Office team don't have to worry one jot about .NET 2.0 or "Longhorn".
They know their program will run first time on the new system and have
ZERO dependencies on the drunken framework. Imagine if they'd written it
to target .NET 1.1 and XP - it would be OUT OF DATE before it even got
off the shelf!

PS. I'd like to apologize for the angry tone in my previous post. I was
irritated by something else, and took it out on you. Didn't follow my "save
and edit rule" :-(

Hehe, you were probably irritated reading about the "Avalon" layer, or
some other wizz-bang-go-faster-over-hyped aspect of the new system

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Jon,

Were those products which previously hadn't used C/C++ though, or was
it just that they were adapted to use the new features? There's a big
difference.

Yes, they were in C/C++, but not using MFC and ATL, but the big names
grabbed them with both hands and (as we can see) were right to do so.

A lot of it is in the web app market rather than shrink-wrapped
software

Yup, that's where I'm currently using it. The client side is a disaster
in my view, but the server only needs one framework version and there's
no WinForms or silly XAML to worry about. Just fire up Mozilla/Firefox
from any platform on any machine, anywhere in the world and off you
go... (runs on legacy browsers like IE too).