4 ms·
C++ would be absolutely terrible for social media applications. There, the barrier isn't usually the speed but correctness and maintenance overhead.
by duaneb 12y ago
C++ would be absolutely terrible for social media applications. There, the barrier isn't usually the speed but correctness and maintenance overhead.
- TillE 12y agoIs Objective C really that much better? If you have decent APIs/libraries, C++ would be just fine.
- gte910h 12y agoObjective C is head and shoulders better to program in than C++. It's still got the same C warts that C++ does in a lot of place, but it is far simpler and less leaky than C++. C++ is still faster and more cross platform, than objective-c --Have done both professionally
- reubenmorais 12y agoNo, but according to Chris Lattner, Swift is.
- Gracana 12y agoAs an example, OKCupid uses C++ and runs on a custom webserver. http://www.okcupid.com/about/technology http://www.okcupid.com/about/technology
- 31reasons 12y agoI don't understand. Why would you make everything in-house especially for site like Ok-Cupid which is not exactly used to power rocket engines.
- logicchains 12y agoThey did a blog post on it that I can't find right now. Essentially, they made it quite a while ago (2002? I don't recall exactly), and all other options were too slow. Their backend apparently has to do a lot of work calculating match scores when users search.
- logicchains 12y agoFound a post by one of the developers describing the decision in some detail: http://www.brightjourney.com/q/okcupid-write-web-server http://www.brightjourney.com/q/okcupid-write-web-server They've also open sourced their server: https://github.com/okws/okws https://github.com/okws/okws
- jacquesm 12y agoThey were in much the same boat as I was back then: whatever you could install out of the box was simply too slow. Inefficiency would have caused us to die on hosting costs so we had to build our own webserver and so on. It's gotten a lot easier over the last decade and a half to build a performant website. If Ok-Cupid were started today I highly doubt they would do that the same way. But given when they did start it I figure they literally did not have a choice.
- jeremyjh 12y agoC++ can be just fine. It can also be used to write software bad enough to quit over, that dozens of people will maintain for decades. And they talk about it. I don't think Objective C has that problem.
- alttab 12y agoTo be fair, Objective C hasn't run billion dollar companies for decades yet either (in mass).
- jeremyjh 12y agoYes, that is my point but I didn't make it very well. If Objective C were routinely subjected to these sorts of projects, I think its over-all reputation would be a lot worse.
- threeseed 12y agoObjective-C up until the last couple years was powering the payments infrastructure for the Apple Online Store.
- alttab 12y agoWhich isn't exposing Objective-C to a wide range of engineers in the industry to the point people and relate and swap horror stories about it.
- SoftwareMaven 12y agoNo, objC isn't better. While it is fine for UI stuff, I wouldn't really want I build a web app with it. What I've read of Swift is more interesting.
- pjmlp 12y agoFunny NeXT thought otherwise. WebObjects was a very good server platform.
- epsylon 12y agoAnd Swift would be equally terrible for a high performance 3D game. (It's not because the guy from Apple said it that it's true.) There's a reason why every single AAA studio uses C++ for their engines and titles. And that's the same reason why it is terrible for social media applications.
- pjmlp 12y agoMostly because game studios don't write compilers so they get to use what the respective OS vendors SDKs offer.
- gte910h 12y agoEvery single AAA studio uses C++ to write the smallest portion of their game they can in C++. Then they put a sane, modern language on top of it many places, Actionscript at EA, Python at many other places, LUA at others, C# at others, and write in a high level language that doesn't leak abstractions like a nut milk bag.