Programming: Successor of C++

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AkiraDev
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Programming: Successor of C++

Post by AkiraDev »

An open question to open the new forum: which programming language do you think has the best chances of taking, on a long term, the position C++ has nowadays as a complete programming language? If so, why?
Please note, I am referring to merit based on language design, not marketing! :lol:

My bet is on D. Although it is not being designed as backwards compatible with C++, it has a lot of common features as well as modern features like built-in garbage collection, and also supports static polymorphism. In addition, it assumes operator commutivity, treats built-in arrays as objects and has a bunch of optimizations which C++ still unfortunately misses - meaning benchmarks show very good performance (in most cases similar to C++ in comparison to C) for code compiled in D despite the level of abstraction it carries.

Links for those who might be interested:

http://www.digitalmars.com/d/index.html
[url]http://jcc_7.tripod.com/d/links.html[/url]

I would like to hear your opinions!

Best regards
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Ryan Norton
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Post by Ryan Norton »

MWAHAHA lets make this a poll.

Personally, I like objective c. Mostly because I havn't used C# that much. However the intellisense with C# is so perfect it is literally amazing.

That and I have a feeling apple is going to take over the world, lol.

So, it really depends who wins, MS or Apple.
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Post by lowjoel »

C++0x... the successor to C++, when in essense its just C++ with more libraries? read stroustrup's home page for more details :D
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Post by Jorg »

Dang... I recently found an OLD language (like Fortran or Eiffel) being rewritten to a new standard. What most appealed to me is that they integrated ways of spawning threads in code as simple as telling the compiler that the block of code can be ran simultaneausly from the rest of the code. Also a lot of modern compiler tricks such as interfaces, multiple inheritance, properties, the works were included.

I cannot remember however what language it was. It was old, but totally rewritten .. It looked like something that could be nice for the future it took away a lot of lower level problems.

My guess the next best language is a mix between scripting and low level. The computer world around us is getting ever so complicated. New techniques are invented, ways to draw a GUI, (web)services, although a coder nowadays does not want to operate all that on a lower level, so XML is going to be a very important asset, and to automate things, code will be integrated in that (like XAML or XUL).

C++ will exist for a while, I think it's successor managed C (the new standard) will be a nice option. The new managed C standard allows both managed pointers as unmanaged pointers which will give it an advantage over C#.

Just my 2ct's

By the way, if anybody knows what 'old' language was recently revived please share. I have been looking for a while now and cannot find it back.

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Post by upCASE »

Hi!
Hmm... I somewhat doubt that there will ever be a "real" successor to C++. New programming languages however will have to adapt the object orientation.

I see the real "problem" is that there is nothing really "new" in a sense like C was new when it came up. The most inovative thing I saw is brainfuck (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck). Other major languages try to be like C++ and #include all the good things Java gave us. As a result we get more bytecode languages that make live easier for developers, but the question is: Do we want that?

Carbage collection is a nice thing to have, indeed. But personally I like the control, being able to explicitly delete something when I want it. Most languages coming up have this "Just do it, I care about what you may do wroing" approach. This is not a bad thing, but makes developers become more sloppy when designing as they tend to care more for a fancy clean UML chart, than a clever implementation.

The choice for a language depends on your personality and what you want to do with it. To me programming is (besides that it is my job) a funny game, challenging with every new step I take. I like to learn from my errors, be in control of what I do. I had a bumpy road to programming as when I started I missed one important aspect of a coder: Patients!
If C/C++/ASM tought me one thing it's patients....

My opinion is that none of the existing languages will vanish and that there will be no real successor to them. Making everything easier and hiding internals from the developer is a nice thing but not a solution. Nobody wants a mathematician who has never thought about why a simple addition give the result it does. I don't want programmers who don't think about the difference of stack and heap anymore....

I know, they don't have to, but how can things evolve if nobody cares for the internals anymore? Why do people still use ASM if it's such a pain in the a**?
Ryan Norton wrote:So, it really depends who wins, MS or Apple.
It's even worse. Sure, Apple and MS have a lot of financial power so they can afford not to choose a better solution to a problem, but take what they allready got, even if it takes more time to finish something. But I suppose a real change would come up if the Unix community started using some other language than C/C++ or even ASM for core development.

As you may have noticed, I sound conservative. I'm not. I just haven't seen somehting really new and good that would make me change my way of doing things.
The question to me still is:
1. What language can I get most of?
2. What language would I teach my son (if he ever wants to start coding)?

My answers:
1. ASM, C/C++, Java for mobiles etc.
2. Maybe Euphoria (to teach the most basic coding stuff), Java/Python for object orientation and not f**cking him up, because something doesn't work, C/C++ for advanced stuff and patients.

If there ever will be a language where I stop seeing posts like "It doesn't compile", "I get error ###", "It crashes" or "Why is this so complicated??", I think it may be a "perfect" language, but I fear that we will all have lost some fun and insight.

Ok, just my 2 cents. The preacherman has ended :D
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Post by lowjoel »

to me euphoria looked like VB... and people know how much im against VB...
upCASE
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Post by upCASE »

Hi!
lowjoel wrote:to me euphoria looked like VB... and people know how much im against VB...
In fact it copies most features of BASIC (not VB). Personaly I dislike VB too. Still it would be my choice if my son starts coding. He's only 4 month old now, so I guess it will take a pretty amount of time till he does :D, but still, I thought about when I got my first C64 and a BASIC for kids book. It was pretty well written and I had a lot of fun. Now with Euphoria he'd learn an easy language, learn the basics of coding and could get pretty good results. I guess he wouldn't loose patients and want to learn more, as his results would get better and better. To be honest my first "real" program was a clone of an old Atari VC 2600 game called "Atlantis" (maybe someone remembers the good old past :D). I wrote it in Pascal 5.5 at the age of 15. If I had learned an easy language like Euphoria first, I guess I would have wrote it early, it would have looked better and maybe my skills would be better today, as I would have spend more time programming.

Hmm... thinking about it: With wxEuphoria I could even give him a first glance on the beauty of wxWidgets :D

Or maybe he never starts coding, thinks I'm a nerd and will be more the "sporty" type I never was :D Dreaming of my son to walk in my footsteps... :D
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lowjoel
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Post by lowjoel »

lol yea... though it'll be at least 10 years before i have a son lol
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Post by geon »

I think the big thing of next-gen languages will be transparent threading and distrubuted computing. The coming Cell concept seems very difficult to fully utilize without high level support for this kind of functionality.

I base this on my impression that processors will have a hard time to get much faster now. I't would simply be cheaper if you can just buy a few more.
lowjoel
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Post by lowjoel »

yea i sure will if intel would want to have dual-proc motherboards than wanting all of us to use their HT thing... which IMHO is crap since it diesnt do much for most apps coz they dont know HT!
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Post by Ric »

For a language to realy be a standard it will definatly need to be compileable, not interpreted, so it sounds somthing like c, c++, or Pascal. But after trying wxDev I think the next big thing will be an invisable lanuage. Programming strategies will be crucial, but let a program write the code.
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