> wouldn't want to write a webapp in C++ Actually, POCO has all the stuff you need to write a web-app: templating, form handling, http request/reponse objects,

> wouldn't want to write a webapp in C++ Actually, POCO has all the stuff you need to write a web-app: templating, form handling, http request/reponse objects, etc. Not that I've done it, but it looks like you could write a web-app using POCO::Net rather painlessly. I like C++ and don't understand the frustration others express. I don't use a subset, and neither do the other people I work with. We use pretty much the whole thing, TMP, macros and all. Being well familiar with C++ I can never see a clear reason to prefer something like Java. Qt is better for GUI stuff. POCO is just as good, or better, for network stuff. With C++ you can go ahead and marry the host platform's system calls when that makes sense (i.e. write a unix program). When it comes to scientific or graphics type libraries it seems like the premier solution usually has a first class C++ interface. The Java equivalents seem harder to evaluate. I did a bunch of GIS stuff recently, using proj.4 and various other things. It sure appears to me that the Java/C# equivalents of the GIS type libraries are less supported and less popular ports of the C++/C ones. If you have perl/python and C++ in your tool belt, I just don't see the need to reach for the so-called C++ replacements. Aside from hiring considerations, that is.