Conspiracy Theory #1

[Michael Farnsworth]

On 11/19/2009 08:52 PM, Sean Kelly wrote:
> retard Wrote:
>
>> Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:47:46 -0800, Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>>
>>> It seems to me that MS expects C++ to go the way of FORTRAN and
>>> COBAL.  Still there, still used, but by an increasingly small number of
>>> people for a small (but important!) subset of things.  Note how MS still
>>> hasn't produced a C99 compiler. They just don't see it as relevant to
>>> enough people to be financially worthwhile.
>>
>> Even the open source community is using more and more dynamic languages
>> such as Python on the desktop and Web 2.0 (mostly javascript, flash,
>> silverlight, php, python) is a strongly growing platform. I expect most
>> of the every day apps to move to the cloud during the next 10 years.
>> Unfortunately c++ and d missed the train here. People don't care about
>> performance anymore. Even application development has moved from library
>> writing to high level descriptions of end user apps that make use of high
>> quality foss/commercial off-the-shelf components. Cloud computing, real-
>> time interactive communication, and fancy visual look are the key
>> features these days.
>
> Performance per watt is a huge issue for server farms, and until all this talk of low power, short pipeline, massively parallel computing is realized (ie. true "cloud computing"), systems languages will have a very definite place in this arena.  I know of large-scale Java projects that go to extreme lengths to avoid garbage collection cycles because they take upwards of 30 seconds to complete, even on top-of-the-line hardware.  Using a language like C remains a huge win in these situations.
>
> Even in this magical world of massively parallel computing there will be a place for systems languages.  After all, that's how interaction with hardware works, consistent performance for time-critical code is achieved, etc.  I think the real trend to consider is that projects are rarely written in just one language these days, and ease of integration between pieces is of paramount importance.  C/C++ still pretty much stinks in this respect.

Aye.  I work at a movie VFX firm (anybody went to go see New Moon?  I 
wouldn't expect it on this list, but the wolves were done with a a fur 
system that I and one other developer wrote recently, so keep your eye 
out for them), and I worked at a game development company before this. 
These are big industries, and our software requirements parallel the 
kind also placed on scientific, simulation, and military software 
development.  Speed with reasonable memory usage (say, 4 GB per task!) 
is the name of the game, 100%, and we regularly have to sacrifice coding 
speed and good UI to reach it (although we'd prefer not to...D would be 
really helpful in that regard).  Our studio uses python and C++; the 
python to glue the pipeline together, the C++ to do the heavy lifting. 
The python has the "execute once and exit" sort of code, and the C++ 
code execution is where we prefer to spend our cycles as much as 
possible on our render farm.

I love it when I hear "people don't care about performance anymore," 
because in my experience that couldn't be further from the truth.  It 
sorta reminds me of the "Apple is dying" argument that crops up every so 
often.  There will probably always be a market for Apple, and there will 
always be a market for performance.

Mmm....performance...

-Mike