What kinds of applications need C++ developers?

[Michael David Crawford]

I'm not trying to start a language war here...

Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java. Web
applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.

C++ is commonly used for financial applications, 3-D gaming and
cryptography.

It's also used for Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls its
device drivers - however that form of C++ is EC++, the inappropriately named
Embedded C++. It doesn't permit a lot of techniques that I enjoy when I
write for other kinds of platforms.

What other kinds of applications need C++ developers?

Native desktop computer GUI is commonly done in C++ but it is quite
frustration to me that when I click on a job board post seeking UI
developers, they usually seek Javascript.

It's also frustrating to me that when I search for "C++" on craigslist,
monster and the like, I turn up a lot of jobs seeking javascript, java or C#
coders, in which C++ is regarded as a qualification, but the job itself
would not until actually developing in C++.

I'm not unwilling to learn new languages. The chances are quite good that I
know more programming languages than you do, but I regard C++ as my
favorite.


--
[ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ]
[ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ]

[Jason C. McDonald]

On 05/20/2015 10:35 AM, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>
> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>
> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java. Web
> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>
> C++ is commonly used for financial applications, 3-D gaming and
> cryptography.
>
> It's also used for Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls
its
> device drivers - however that form of C++ is EC++, the inappropriately
named
> Embedded C++. It doesn't permit a lot of techniques that I enjoy when I
> write for other kinds of platforms.
>
> What other kinds of applications need C++ developers?
>

Not just that - C++ is often used when you need considerable control
over the memory usage. It is used to build game engines, high-level
programming languages, and a number of other engines and complex systems.

> Native desktop computer GUI is commonly done in C++ but it is quite
> frustration to me that when I click on a job board post seeking UI
> developers, they usually seek Javascript.
>
> It's also frustrating to me that when I search for "C++" on craigslist,
> monster and the like, I turn up a lot of jobs seeking javascript, java or
C#
> coders, in which C++ is regarded as a qualification, but the job itself
> would not until actually developing in C++.

Even if they claim that C++ is not needed because "we have higher-level
languages", we're looking at layers of abstractions. Many of those
languages are themselves BUILT on C or C++, as I said, so if something
borks on the higher level, someone will have to dig back down through
those layers to find what went wrong. (Look up "Law of Leaky
Abstractions" by Joel Spolsky).

I believe higher level languages are extremely useful and good to have
around. I know Javascript, its evil stepchild ActionScript (coded in it
for two years), Python, and a few others. However, there is a lot to be
said for the lazy coding habits that form when one is working
exclusively in third- and fourth-generation languages. Because essential
tasks like memory management, garbage collection, and whatnot are
automatically done for you in those languages, you cease to think about
it, and we wind up with programs that take up 10x the memory they should.

> I'm not unwilling to learn new languages. The chances are quite good that
I
> know more programming languages than you do, but I regard C++ as my
> favorite.

It's mine, too. The habits formed in C++ help to make us aware of what's
really going on inside the other higher-level languages, as I said.

There's a lot to be said for passing fads and transitory languages. (Try
to find a COBOL programmer in mainstream.) What is an utter breakthrough
in one generation of coding is an utter flop in the next. C++ itself
may, one day, go the way of FORTRAN and COBOL because someone builds a
new language *at that abstraction level* that is even more intuitive.
The idea then becomes one of transition readiness. If the entire game
changes, C++ers with their careful memory management habits will be able
to swap, while programmers from automagical do-it-for-you languages
(with no lower-level experience) will have to unlearn everything they
hold dear.

--
Jason C. McDonald (CodeMouse92)
[CEO, Lead Dev @ MousePaw Games]

[Wouter van Ooijen]

Michael David Crawford schreef op 20-May-15 om 7:35 PM:

>
> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>
> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java. Web
> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>
> C++ is commonly used for financial applications, 3-D gaming and
> cryptography.

add real-time embedded.

To summarize: applications where the hardware cost would dominate over
the software cost.

And guess in which language the interpreters for all those managed
run-time-duck-typing languages are written...

Wouter

[James Kuyper]

On 05/20/2015 01:35 PM, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>
> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>
> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java. Web
> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>
> C++ is commonly used for financial applications, 3-D gaming and
> cryptography.
>
> It's also used for Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls
its
> device drivers - however that form of C++ is EC++, the inappropriately
named
> Embedded C++. It doesn't permit a lot of techniques that I enjoy when I
> write for other kinds of platforms.
>
> What other kinds of applications need C++ developers?

A large fraction of the scientific data processing code for the projects
that I work on is C++ code. Most of the rest is C, and some of it is
Fortran. Regardless of which language is used, the programs reads some
input files, perform various manipulations on the input data to create
the output data, and then write output files, without any user
interaction, and no use of the internet in any way, which makes these
programs seem extremely odd to many people. The farthest upstream
programs (several of which are my responsibility) read raw data
transmitted down from a satellite observing the Earth. The farthest
downstream programs produce dozens of different products that describe
climate patterns, plant cover, pollution levels, chlorophyl levels in
the ocean, etc.

[Michael David Crawford]

Thank you for your responses.

For many years I have been controversial in my assertion that everyone should know at least one assembly code, even if they never
use it. A close friend told me she preferred java because she wanted to know that her programs were correct. "If Java code is
always correct, then why does borland sell a java memory leak detector?"

I used to write a lot of physics code in FORTRAN. It is refreshing to hear about scientific coding being done in C++. Also I've
done lots of image processing. I have some connections in the image processing business who might be able to hook me up.

I still have some hollerith card decks full of my COBOL source. :-/

[David LaRue]

Michael David Crawford <mdcra...@googlemail.com> wrote in
news:01c5af1f-c13f-41bb...@googlegroups.com:

I've used C++ for the past 25 years or so. It can do pretty much
anything but takes more thought and planning to keep things sane. I
prefer it to most other languages.

I've used many other languages over the years. The C++ to C# adjustment
is complicated by the huge array of classes C# has access to. I tend to
dislike the mentality that you need language/tool XYZ to solve a
problem. I like to mix and match them as needed to solve issues.

I've worked in the following areas with C++.
- embedded systems
- operating systems
- device drivers
- several operator consoles for telecomunications
- applications to control firmware (software side) for telecom
- automated microscope operation for blood workups
- vision system
- firmware and software for the fire alarm industry

Yes it takes a lot of wading to find the right jobs to match what you
want to do. I usually search or post to Monster and the like and then
let the headhunters call with the wrong jobs. They get to undertnd what
I'm looking for and can come back when they hear about a position you
might be interested in.

Good luck,

David

[Wouter van Ooijen]

Walter H. schreef op 27-May-15 om 10:00 PM:

>
> On 20.05.2015 19:35, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>>
>> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>>
>> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java.
>> Web
>> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>>
>> C++ is commonly used for financial applications,

> not really
> either they are old and run on main frames, then they are COBOL or PL/1
> or they are modern then they are the same as other business applications;

I always thought that C++ was for device drivers, game engines,
interpreters and micro-controllers, yet most C++ programmers I meet at
the local user group and at conferences work for stock (or derivate)
trading companies. Maybe that is where most of the sponsor money for
such events can be found...

Wouter van Ooijen

[James K. Lowden]

On Wed, 27 May 2015 14:00:06 CST
"Walter H." <Walter...@mathemainzel.info> wrote:

> > C++ is commonly used for financial applications,

> not really
> either they are old and run on main frames, then they are COBOL or
> PL/1 or they are modern then they are the same as other business
> applications;
>

> e.g. SAP brings its own scripting language ABAP

If you think "financial applications" are written atop things like SAP,
then your answer makes sense. Perhaps you are unaware, though, that
the financial industry employs lots of C++ programmers.

I observe that C++ is the last man standing, the only language in
common use that compiles to machine code. You may point to C, but a
good deal of what used to be C has migrated to C++. Cobol and PL/1 are
extinct, and Fortran a specialty.

It is the world's biggest language, containing two Turing-complete
syntaxes that I know of, and supporting several paradigms. That lets
it be many things to many people. The STL is a magnificent
conceptualization that has yet to be surpassed in any language. These
things combine to make C++ terrifically powerful, if complex.
Financial houses have compute-intensive applications over complex data,
and C++ is a natural fit.

C++ has one central weakness, though: like C, it models the machine as a
von Neumann machine, as a single process. Such machines are
increasingly rare, and C++ as a *language* would have to be redefined
to model the modern, multiprocessor machine. The C++ community has
yet to come to grips with that fact.

Yes, we have features in the standard library to support
multithreading. Multithreading defeats the language's own features,
though, making the entire heap implicitly volatile. Because the
community's focus is always on speed, we get things like std::future,
but no support for CSP and next to none for reflection.

Taming complexity and enabling the human being to reason about the
process's correctness are traditional goals of programming languages.
Yet in C++ the most difficult aspect, concurrency, is regarded as the
programmer's problem. Real men know when to take a lock, right?

Grappling with currency as a language feature is what Pike and Thompson
are doing at Google with Go. By elevating pipes to first-class
elements -- typed channels -- they take back concurrency management
from the operating system and give it to the compiler. Et voila,
suddenly write-after-read errors become compile-time errors.

The only CSP implementation I've seen for C++ is of course a library.
It is terribly complex, a syntactical firestorm compared to Go, and
still (because a library) fails to identify concurrency errors at
compile time. Without extending the language proper to model N threads
of control where N > 1, C++ will perforce cede concurrent processing on
concurrent machines to concurrent languages.

I think the place to go, syntactically, is roughly were namespaces
are. Similar to namespace and class, we could have "process", where
everything in a process is treated much as a whole program is today.
The difference would be that variables could be passed from one process
to another -- perhaps through a channel -- at which point the compiler
would invalidate access to those data within the sending process.
Static analysis would identify many such errors at or near compile
time. Any that are missed would generate an exception instead of a
signal or simple undetected data error.

The answer to the OP's question, then, is "applications that need to
run at the speed of the machine". The caveat is that the machine is
changing, and to remain relevant C++ needs to change to match it.

--jkl

[Francis Glassborow]

On 28/05/2015 22:08, James K. Lowden wrote:
>
> The answer to the OP's question, then, is "applications that need to
> run at the speed of the machine". The caveat is that the machine is
> changing, and to remain relevant C++ needs to change to match it.
>
> --jkl

However it should be noted that WG21 (C++ Committee) is making serious
efforts to tackle concurrency at the core of the language. Back in the
early 2000s they were persuaded that simply officially supporting
threads was not enough. That was quite a battle given that it started
prior to multicore processors and with an entrenched group who thought
that threads would be enough.

The most important first step was to change the abstract machine on
which the language is based. That has been done to some extent but it is
still ongoing work. Like most foundations it is largely invisible and
people just see the super-structure.

Of course formally incorporating threads into the language was/is
important because that was where many C++ programmers were coming from.
Fully incorporting concurrency can only come about once the underlying
abstract machine model is stable. Note that the much accelerated
development/release cycle for the C++ Standard means that often the
language itself is often several years ahead of implementations but that
also is improving (and we owe much to the hard work and dedication of
those implementing GCC and Clang.

C++ standard development has itself become multithreaded with multiple
subgroups working concurrently on various major projects. When C++ 98
was released at least half the regular WG21 participants went away to
recuperate from the long haul efforts of getting the first standard
released. By contrast, when C++11 was delevered the work load went up
and a committee that normally had an attendance of about 60 started to
increase in size with current attendance being around 100 coupled with
regualr specialist video conferences to supplement and prepare proposals
for the regular twice yearly six-day meetings.

Francis

[Francis Glassborow]

On 28/05/2015 14:57, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>
> Walter H. schreef op 27-May-15 om 10:00 PM:
>>
>> On 20.05.2015 19:35, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>>>
>>> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java.
>>> Web
>>> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>>>
>>> C++ is commonly used for financial applications,
>> not really
>> either they are old and run on main frames, then they are COBOL or PL/1
>> or they are modern then they are the same as other business applications;
>
> I always thought that C++ was for device drivers, game engines,
> interpreters and micro-controllers, yet most C++ programmers I meet at
> the local user group and at conferences work for stock (or derivate)
> trading companies. Maybe that is where most of the sponsor money for
> such events can be found...
>
> Wouter van Ooijen
>
>

Well the AXXU annual conference does have Bloomberg sponsoring a private
bar :) But its mainline sponsors do not seem to come from the finance
sectors.

In addition both CERN and Fermilab make extensive use of C++ and
Fermilab was the main proponent of the special maths functions IS (C and
C++)

Of course there is relatively little demand for C++ specialist
programmers in High Energy Physics because those doing the programming
are the physicists. The same applies in other fields such as radion
astronomy. It is generally easier to bring a competent mathematician or
physicist up to an adequate level of competency in C++ than it is to
teach an average programmer enough of the problem domain for them to
benefit the relevant community.

Fortran used to be completely dominant in many areas of science,
engineering and maths but this is much less the case today. However note
that SC22/WG5 is still a pretty active group

It is a mistake to judge the activity in a language based on public
visibility (books, job adverts etc.)

Francis

[Martin Bonner]

On Friday, 29 May 2015 16:50:13 UTC+1, Francis Glassborow wrote:
> It is a mistake to judge the activity in a language based on public
> visibility (books, job adverts etc.)

On the other hand looking at job adverts is a pretty good way of judging
how much demand there is for programmers skilled in the language. (I'm
not disagreeing, just pointing out that there more than one question
people might want to ask, and it's quite likely those questions will have
different answers.)

[Wouter van Ooijen]

Francis Glassborow schreef op 29-May-15 om 6:46 PM:

>
> On 28/05/2015 14:57, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:
>>
>> Walter H. schreef op 27-May-15 om 10:00 PM:
>>>
>>> On 20.05.2015 19:35, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>>>>
>>>> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java.
>>>> Web
>>>> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>>>>
>>>> C++ is commonly used for financial applications,
>>> not really
>>> either they are old and run on main frames, then they are COBOL or PL/1
>>> or they are modern then they are the same as other business
>>> applications;
>>
>> I always thought that C++ was for device drivers, game engines,
>> interpreters and micro-controllers, yet most C++ programmers I meet at
>> the local user group and at conferences work for stock (or derivate)
>> trading companies. Maybe that is where most of the sponsor money for
>> such events can be found...
>>
>> Wouter van Ooijen
>>
>>
> Well the AXXU annual conference does have Bloomberg sponsoring a private
> bar :)

You mean ACCU?

I know, I was there, and so were you IIRC :)

And a surprising number of attendees I spoke to worked in some
finance-related company (as opposed to an industry-related company, as I
used to expect).

Wouter van Ooijen

[Bo Persson]

On 2015-05-29 20:24, Martin Bonner wrote:
>
> On Friday, 29 May 2015 16:50:13 UTC+1, Francis Glassborow wrote:
>> It is a mistake to judge the activity in a language based on public
>> visibility (books, job adverts etc.)
>
> On the other hand looking at job adverts is a pretty good way of judging
> how much demand there is for programmers skilled in the language. (I'm
> not disagreeing, just pointing out that there more than one question
> people might want to ask, and it's quite likely those questions will have
> different answers.)
>
>

With some exceptions. Old geezers writing Cobol (billions of lines per
year) already have jobs and don't read ads, so they have to be head
hunted instead.

Low number of ads doesn't have to mean that the demand is low.

[Peter Chapin]

On Fri, 29 May 2015, Francis Glassborow wrote:

> It is a mistake to judge the activity in a language based on public
> visibility (books, job adverts etc.)

What about activity in online forums? It seems like the activity in this
group has dwindled drastically in recent years.

I also regularly read comp.lang.ada and activity in that group is probably
at least 5x more than here (might be 10x more). I'm not going to suggest
that means Ada is 10x more popular than C++. But I'm not sure what it does
mean.

Peter

[Öö Tiib]

On Saturday, 30 May 2015 15:40:19 UTC+3, Peter Chapin wrote:
> On Fri, 29 May 2015, Francis Glassborow wrote:
>
> > It is a mistake to judge the activity in a language based on public
> > visibility (books, job adverts etc.)
>
> What about activity in online forums? It seems like the activity in this
> group has dwindled drastically in recent years.

Usenet groups do not matter these days. Usenet is text-only, no
illustrations, no formatting, no coloring and hard to reach for novice.

Discussions about C++ have migrated to nicer forums (like Stack Overflow
cplusplus.com forums and isocpp.org groups). About 500 C++ questions/day
in Stack Overflow ... about 30 topics/day in cplusplus.com.

> I also regularly read comp.lang.ada and activity in that group is probably
> at least 5x more than here (might be 10x more). I'm not going to suggest
> that means Ada is 10x more popular than C++. But I'm not sure what it does
> mean.

Ada is perhaps fine enough to read for novice without syntax highlighting
and the like so Usenet is good enough? About Ada there seems to be one
question per day in Stack Overflow and that is sort of at "dying off" side.
Similar about C++ are CodeGuru or comp.lang.c++.

[Richard]

{ this article is accepted to illustrate the policy of rejecting due
to [missing context] in our newsgroup rules (see the link in banner
below). the poster has quoted some of the article, but not enough
to establish the context, and in usual circumstances this can be
a reason for rejection. please quote enough to make your reply
understandable without having to dig up the rest of the thread in
the archives. to clarify, "it" in the quoted text does not give
enough information to comprehend the following remarks about the
usenet. what exactly is the "it" about whose meaning "Peter Chapin"
is quotes as unsure? the responsibility lies with the respondent,
in this case with "Richard". thanks for reading! -mod }

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

Peter Chapin <PCh...@vtc.vsc.edu> spake the secret code
<alpine.CYG.2.11.1...@WIL414CHAPIN.vtc.vsc.edu> thusly:

>But I'm not sure what it does mean.

The average person is not aware of usenet anymore. For younger developers,
this is also true. They use stackoverflow or other web based discussion
forums, for better or worse.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

[pip010]

{ quoted banner redacted. lines wrapped to fit ~70 characters
per line. -mod }

On Wednesday, May 20, 2015 at 6:40:08 PM UTC+2, Michael David Crawford
wrote:

C++ is more pervasive than you think.
Mobile is huge and guess what most run to for deploying truly cross-platform
solution? Regardless where is nokia,iphone or android it is always C++ and
not Java. Yes Java or JS or anything is usually used for the GUI part.

How about servers? ( especially trading companies )
c++ server can be efficient, same can hardly be said for Java let's say :)
While a Java server might be written for N$/year and then cost you 2*N$/year
to run (energy cost) a c++ server will cost you 2*N/year to build and only
N$/year for energy cost. Same is translated to battery life and mobile apps
!!!

Here is my reason though: for the commercial app I'm currently invovled in:
it is the only lang that can handle both low-level (hardware) comm and
high-level application code + GUI. Otherwise I had to introduce a new
language/stack/interop all things I dont miss needing to do :D

[Cholo Lennon]

On 05/20/2015 02:35 PM, Michael David Crawford wrote:
>
> I'm not trying to start a language war here...
>
> Mobile applications are most commonly written in Objective-C or Java. Web
> applications commonly use Javascript, PHP, Python, Java, Ruby or Perl.
>
> C++ is commonly used for financial applications, 3-D gaming and
> cryptography.
>
> It's also used for Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls
its
> device drivers - however that form of C++ is EC++, the inappropriately
named
> Embedded C++. It doesn't permit a lot of techniques that I enjoy when I
> write for other kinds of platforms.
>
> What other kinds of applications need C++ developers?
>

Adding to other answers: Telecommunications software uses a lot of C++
(among other languages like C and Java).

> Native desktop computer GUI is commonly done in C++ but it is quite
> frustration to me that when I click on a job board post seeking UI
> developers, they usually seek Javascript.
>
> It's also frustrating to me that when I search for "C++" on craigslist,
> monster and the like, I turn up a lot of jobs seeking javascript, java or
C#
> coders, in which C++ is regarded as a qualification, but the job itself
> would not until actually developing in C++.
>
> I'm not unwilling to learn new languages. The chances are quite good that
I
> know more programming languages than you do, but I regard C++ as my
> favorite.
>
>


--

Cholo Lennon
Bs.As.
ARG

[Jonathan Lee]

{ edited by mod to shorten lines to ~70 characters. -mod }

Hi,

I work in medical imaging (x-Ray machines healthcare products). Almost
all the developing task here in our team, for advanced applications,
is done using c++: image pre/post processings, 3D CT volume
reconstructions, image quality assessment etc. Also our teams working
on volume rendering machines develop 3D computer graphics algorithms,
volume imaging processing techniques and some machine learning
algorithms using also mainly c++ (and small portion of Python). These
are all advanced applications, which means they are not embedded in
specific hardware, but they're closely related to it and performance
wrt specific hardware is extremely important and need to be reliable.

I believe for all x-Ray device companies, c++ is the standard language
for all the advanced applications. the main reason is c++'s compelling
feature for high performance processing (in real time or simply just
for massive amount of raw image data) and for memory management. This
is a huge market and in all our recruitments for engineers each year,
c++ is always a major role qualification.

And maybe one more thing, in acdemia when regarding signal/image
processing, most of the scientific groups use Matlab. But guess what
the low level language of Matlab is :-) and plus Mathworks is also
recruiting lots of c++ programmers.

Best.
Jon

[sandip.i...@googlemail.com]

{ quoted server banner manually redacted. -mod }

Following scenarios require you to use C/C++.
1. An application where you are competing on the basis of performance. For
example, extremely low and guaranteed latency stock trading system. (Due to
GC jitter, Java or C# are not usable for this). Latencies here are less than
a microsecond for processing a stock order.
2. High volume data processing that requires huge computing power involving
tens of thousands of machines. Here, even 10 to 20 percent speed gain can
result a saving of millions of dollars in run time cost. In real life, C/C++
applications are an order of magnitude faster than equivalent applications
written in other programming languages.
3. Applications where you need to maximize the number of objects cached in
memory.