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I think the answer to this poll is dependant on what sorts of development you do. I'm currently doing commercial software development, and I know that if my product is fast and/or smaller than my competition's, I'm going to make sure my marketing literature says something about that.
When I was doing corporate development, development time was as important as anything else. Lots more projects, and your 'customers' can be trained to work the software specifically, so how fast the project could be completed was far more important that how optimal it was...
That being said, either case, VC++ is the way to go, as I think that I can crank out an app as fast in VC as one of those so called RAD environments. ^_
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That is exactly the sort of comment I was looking for 
What I was bascically wondering is whether or not large corporations really care about which language is used, or whether they only want to see a solution that works and is implemented on time.
I was also wondering whether well crafted VC++/ATL apps will become a thing of the past. Will software craftsmen disappear as a relic of a bygone time in a world where software is mass produced?
cheers,
Chris Maunde
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Corporations care about the bottom line (or at least, they should), and having something that works as soon as possible makes sense. It's a cost/benefit tradeoff, you do as much as you can do that isn't really painful, and then roll it out and move on.
Software craftsmanship isn't going away, there just are a LOT more programmers today than there were 15 years ago. Not every job needs deep expertise and an appreciation for the art of coding. Those of us who care about how well written our software is will continue to do the 'low level' coding, either in real-time/embedded, OS-level, or work at creating the tools that other programmers use. (Someone has to write the compiler, VM, etc...)
I don't think it's reasonable to expect all programmers to understand things like cache utilization, as there are plenty of things to be coded that don't require that knowledge. I'm glad there are plenty of VB/SQL programmers out there so I can happily avoid ever having to do that sort of thing again. :
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This looks a lot like a "What do you use, Visual Basic or Visual C++?" poll.
The problem is that these days both tools have a lot of overlapping features. Yes, VB is still the king of RAD tools but you can also use it to create COM components that can help make the application more maintainable. And as far as speed goes, since VB code is now compiled, it's no longer true that it will always be slower than C++.
Visual C++, on the other hand, allows you to use ATL for creating very fast and efficient COM components. It's not much of a RAD tool, but if you spend enough time with it, you can learn to use the various wizards to generate a lot of code. And what can you say about working with a language like C++? Its features and flexibility are tough to beat.
I think VB has a couple of advantages which, in my opinion, make it a better tool TODAY: (1) it's easier to learn, and (2) it has more developers that use it. These two reasons alone I think are what make most companies today go with VB over VC++. Personally though, I dislike VB's syntax. That's why I'm counting on C#/.NET to do what Java should have done a while back: become the language/platform of choice for any type of development
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I agree with you on the reasons corporate developers go with VB. At my last job, I ended up deciding on using VB and ASP for projects so I could find people to hire that could do the job (And I really dislike working with VB, I sooo hate the syntax, and I can't live without pointers).
I left the corporate gig to go back into commercial development to get away from all the things I disliked about corporate development, which a large part of is VB and SQL (yuck!)
I never did like java, so I'm not much of a fan of C# (yet). I guess I don't like garbage collection, it just feels wrong to not clean up after yourself. And the speed..
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As a C++ developer I know where you're coming from when you say that "it just feels wrong not clean up after yourself". I agree that it's weird... but what I find weirder is the total lack of control over memory management. You're basically allocating memory and then letting some ghostly thing that runs in the background clean up for you at some point. It's just strange.
The 3 things I'll miss the most in C# are:
1. allocation of objects on the stack,
2. templates, and
3. multiple implementation inheritance.
I do hear that templates will eventually make their way into the language (as "generics") in the next version. That should win over more C++ guys and at the same time throw more dirt over Java's grave.
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Actually it started in my mind as a VC++ vs C#, and an ASP vs ATL Server question, and then I was thinking about some stuff the Microsoft guys talked about and it grew from there.
So - it's certainly not language specific - but VB/VC flame wars are always fun
cheers,
Chris Maunde
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Well I use C++ (MFC and ATL) HTML, and ASP. And what I've noticed is that VB isn't really any quicker to develop with unless you can use someone's ActiveX control or COM object...well golly....I spend a lot of time writing the bloody COM objects and reusing them!!
I find that getting all the details right -- gosh I really do want rich error codes when its something that a computer illiterate person is going to be running -- takes the majority of my time. No if someone can create a language that keeps me from having to deal with these details I think I'd be much more productive
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Both methods have their place.
The main project I am currently developing was simply impossible to develop in RAD environment such as VC++.
On the other hand simple, smaller apps are easier (and cheaper!)to keep in RAD.
I find that it is rare that I can actualy "decide" what platform to use, it usualy the project that calls for the decision.
When I do have the decision I prefer the platform I am most comfortable with (in my case VC++) I never felt it was slower development time than VB.
As far as the performance, 99% of the most app is User Interface where speed is hardly a concideration
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Both methods have their place.
The main project I am currently developing was simply impossible to develop in RAD environment such as VC++.
On the other hand simple, smaller apps are easier (and cheaper!)to keep in RAD.
I find that it is rare that I can actualy "decide" what platform to use, it usualy the project that calls for the decision.
When I do have the decision I prefer the platform I am most comfortable with (in my case VC++) I never felt it was slower development time than VB.
As far as the performance, 99% of most app is User Interface where speed is hardly a concideration
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