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> Everyone hates C++, and yet every desktop application in widespread use is built with it. I wonder why? Is it really just inertia? First off, that is incorre

> Everyone hates C++, and yet every desktop application in widespread use is built with it. I wonder why? Is it really just inertia? First off, that is incorrect. You underestimate the number of VB, C#, and other apps, not to mention OSX based apps. Most business apps are either in Java on the backend or if they aren't web based they are in proprietary languages and frameworks that likely use a mix of C and C++ at the core. They are mostly shit nowadays though which is why everyone is re-writing them in the Cloud. They're unmaintainable. But yes there are a lot of high visibility popular desktop apps in C++ and yes, it is just inertia. When were all of those desktop apps you're thinking of first built (or came of age)? The early 90s! Microsoft Office, the Adobe suite, Visio (bought out by Microsoft), desktop databases, etc. That was the age of the desktop and briefly, C++ was the best choice. I'll grant you a few very small niches still exist and they are in the desktop domain e.g. web browsers and very complex image editors. But how many people are writing browsers? And simpler image editors are better off being mostly in Objective-C or C# (minus some core libraries which are best off in C).

api 12y ago
The "desktop" market is considerably larger than you think it is. It includes a vast array of professional apps for things like CAD/CAM, SPICE, numeric simulation and analysis, graphics and "real" word processing, management of large data sets, industrial control software, heavy clients for complex remote control applications, typesetting, etc. along with the standard web and software engineering use cases. These are not "legacy" apps. They are huge cutting-edge professional suites that drive massive chunks of the economy and contain some of the most complex and challenging computer code ever written. We're talking about stuff like Monte Carlo analysis and genetic algorithm generation of physical machines, simulation of massive electronic circuits, etc... some of these things are the closest thing software engineering has to modern wonders of the world. Go try re-implementing SolidWorks in JavaScript as a client/server app or for Android or iOS and then tell me desktop is dead. Then there's the whole issue of security, privacy, and data ownership. Cloud demands a lot of trust in the provider, and mobile treats user data with something near contempt (apps "own" their files, etc.). There is absolutely no way I am writing a novel or a Ph.D thesis in the cloud or on a mobile device. I'm doing it on a machine I control with a backup system I control where an app being pulled from an app store or a cloud provider experiencing a hack/failure won't obliterate my two years of work. Granted that such things can be written now in languages other than C++, and sometimes can even be shipped in those languages without torturing the user with secondary runtime installs and other insults. But C++ still really rules here. You write it, you build it, and you ship it. Bloat is fairly minimal. Even if you use Qt the bloat is still a lot less than Jabba.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  I do think the majority of these fall into the "first built in the 90s" category and while they aren't legacy they do have a legacy codebase to deal with. Good examples though. If you were building them from scratch, I would still question the choice of C++ for these as opposed to C#, Objective-C native UI layers combined with a C core.
CountSessine 12y ago
Before that brief timeframe and since then it has been a poor choice for every single type of programming. There are better choices in all cases. I'll grant you a few very small niches still exist and they are in the desktop domain Show me a popular desktop app written in something other than C++. Even when developers have tried to write a desktop app in something other than C++ (like Evernote on Windows) it was deemed a failure and was re-implemented in C++. And you still haven't presented a compelling argument for choosing C over C++. C++ IS C, but with extra stuff that makes it better, like generics, custom types, alternatives to C's nuclear-powered casting, strings that don't blow up in your face, etc, etc. Why should a core library only be written in C?
- api 12y ago
  "Show me a popular desktop app written in something other than C++." Eclipse is the only one that comes to mind.
  - azth 12y ago
    IntelliJ.
- jayvanguard 12y ago
  Show me non-legacy desktop apps that were written in the past few years that are in C++. I believe the majority of ones I use on the Mac were written in Objective-C. If they aren't using specialized legacy libraries (e.g. image processing) I bet I don't have a single one that is in C++ other than image editing and browsing. I'm not sure the state of consumer Windows apps but almost all desktop business apps are in C# or VB. Unless of course they are accessing legacy C++ stuff.
  - unscaled 12y ago
    The post you're replying to just did: Evernote 4 for Windows was rewritten from scratch in C++ (with WTL). It was C#/WPF before. I can give you a few more: Chrome (not entirely new, but still the newest major browser around), Sublime Text (compare its performance with Atom to realize the strengths of C++), GoldenDict, Scan Tailor. Actually, I've tried thinking of new Desktop apps which came out in the last 5 years and there weren't many. Developing new desktop apps is just not as popular as it used to be 10 years ago. It has a lot to do with the rising prominence of web and mobile apps, but this also has something to do with C++, when I think about it. Writing a cross-platform web app with acceptable performance is easier than writing a desktop app with the same properties, since you'd almost certainly need to use C++ to get an app with the same properties on the desktop. With web apps you essentially get cross-platform for free (at least since the days of jQuery and IE shims) and the performance is not stellar, but at least it's not worse than all the other web apps, so it matches your users expectations. On the desktop, you usually get three routes: 1. C++ app with a cross platform GUI toolkit (probably Qt, since GTK user experience is usually horrible on anything other than *NIX) or an abstraction layer like wxWidgets. 2. Cross-platform Java or Mono/.NET app with cross platform GUI toolkit. There are occasional exceptions, but these apps generally tend to be bloated or hard to install, and never match the snappiness of native apps. 3. Write a separate native front-end for each platform, using its own native GUI toolkit. This usually means C with @WinForms/WPF for Windows and Objective-C with Cocoa for Mac. If you have a shared backend, you would usually still be forced to use C or C++ to make it usable with both runtimes.

api 12y ago

The "desktop" market is considerably larger than you think it is. It includes a vast array of professional apps for things like CAD/CAM, SPICE, numeric simulation and analysis, graphics and "real" word processing, management of large data sets, industrial control software, heavy clients for complex remote control applications, typesetting, etc. along with the standard web and software engineering use cases. These are not "legacy" apps. They are huge cutting-edge professional suites that drive massive chunks of the economy and contain some of the most complex and challenging computer code ever written. We're talking about stuff like Monte Carlo analysis and genetic algorithm generation of physical machines, simulation of massive electronic circuits, etc... some of these things are the closest thing software engineering has to modern wonders of the world. Go try re-implementing SolidWorks in JavaScript as a client/server app or for Android or iOS and then tell me desktop is dead. Then there's the whole issue of security, privacy, and data ownership. Cloud demands a lot of trust in the provider, and mobile treats user data with something near contempt (apps "own" their files, etc.). There is absolutely no way I am writing a novel or a Ph.D thesis in the cloud or on a mobile device. I'm doing it on a machine I control with a backup system I control where an app being pulled from an app store or a cloud provider experiencing a hack/failure won't obliterate my two years of work. Granted that such things can be written now in languages other than C++, and sometimes can even be shipped in those languages without torturing the user with secondary runtime installs and other insults. But C++ still really rules here. You write it, you build it, and you ship it. Bloat is fairly minimal. Even if you use Qt the bloat is still a lot less than Jabba.

jayvanguard 12y ago
I do think the majority of these fall into the "first built in the 90s" category and while they aren't legacy they do have a legacy codebase to deal with. Good examples though. If you were building them from scratch, I would still question the choice of C++ for these as opposed to C#, Objective-C native UI layers combined with a C core.

CountSessine 12y ago

Before that brief timeframe and since then it has been a poor choice for every single type of programming. There are better choices in all cases. I'll grant you a few very small niches still exist and they are in the desktop domain Show me a popular desktop app written in something other than C++. Even when developers have tried to write a desktop app in something other than C++ (like Evernote on Windows) it was deemed a failure and was re-implemented in C++. And you still haven't presented a compelling argument for choosing C over C++. C++ IS C, but with extra stuff that makes it better, like generics, custom types, alternatives to C's nuclear-powered casting, strings that don't blow up in your face, etc, etc. Why should a core library only be written in C?

api 12y ago
"Show me a popular desktop app written in something other than C++." Eclipse is the only one that comes to mind.
- azth 12y ago
  IntelliJ.
jayvanguard 12y ago
Show me non-legacy desktop apps that were written in the past few years that are in C++. I believe the majority of ones I use on the Mac were written in Objective-C. If they aren't using specialized legacy libraries (e.g. image processing) I bet I don't have a single one that is in C++ other than image editing and browsing. I'm not sure the state of consumer Windows apps but almost all desktop business apps are in C# or VB. Unless of course they are accessing legacy C++ stuff.
- unscaled 12y ago
  The post you're replying to just did: Evernote 4 for Windows was rewritten from scratch in C++ (with WTL). It was C#/WPF before. I can give you a few more: Chrome (not entirely new, but still the newest major browser around), Sublime Text (compare its performance with Atom to realize the strengths of C++), GoldenDict, Scan Tailor. Actually, I've tried thinking of new Desktop apps which came out in the last 5 years and there weren't many. Developing new desktop apps is just not as popular as it used to be 10 years ago. It has a lot to do with the rising prominence of web and mobile apps, but this also has something to do with C++, when I think about it. Writing a cross-platform web app with acceptable performance is easier than writing a desktop app with the same properties, since you'd almost certainly need to use C++ to get an app with the same properties on the desktop. With web apps you essentially get cross-platform for free (at least since the days of jQuery and IE shims) and the performance is not stellar, but at least it's not worse than all the other web apps, so it matches your users expectations. On the desktop, you usually get three routes: 1. C++ app with a cross platform GUI toolkit (probably Qt, since GTK user experience is usually horrible on anything other than *NIX) or an abstraction layer like wxWidgets. 2. Cross-platform Java or Mono/.NET app with cross platform GUI toolkit. There are occasional exceptions, but these apps generally tend to be bloated or hard to install, and never match the snappiness of native apps. 3. Write a separate native front-end for each platform, using its own native GUI toolkit. This usually means C with @WinForms/WPF for Windows and Objective-C with Cocoa for Mac. If you have a shared backend, you would usually still be forced to use C or C++ to make it usable with both runtimes.