What are the advantages of developing applications in C++ as compared to managed languages?

Question

Hi I want to know why people develop library applications and employee management applications in C++ (this application, for example), when clearly the same thing can be done in C# and VB.NET in a much prettier way. Even banking applications are mostly in C++. Is there a good reason why, apart from the fact that compiled C++ code executes faster?

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Answer 1

C: 1972

C++: 1979

C#: 2000

Now think of the lifetime of a library, especially in a bank, plus, you get to use the libraries (theoretically) on almost every computersystem in existence (as opposed to C#)

You will also still find a lot of COBOL (1960) there.

Answer 2

The main reasons for C++ for say banking applications is:

1. Legacy code. A large financial firm typically has ~10-20-30 years of business specific C/C++ libraries developed in-house, plus a bunch of business specific vendor libraries which may not be available for C#

2. A LOT of that financial code runs on Unix/Linux. While you can purely theoretically build C# code for Linux, it's definitely NOT an established technology you want to bet billion dollar amounts on.

Answer 3

C++ is usable on other types of systems, whereas c# and vb.net are not.

Answer 4

Apart from technical reasons (such that C++ is an "unmanaged" language with quite different capabilities and properties than .NET languages), this can simply be due to preferences. Not all people find that C# and VB.NET are the best tool for every task. Or the prettiest. Why do you think so? And why should others not have similarly good reasons for choosing another tool of their liking?

Update, in reply to Konrad's comment:

It's correct that "preference" is indeed too narrow a term. There's other facets to it:

• Managers / bosses can turn their (possibly badly informed) preferences into business policies;

• A corporation's decade-old codebase can mean that when it comes to choosing the programming language for some new task, you'll evaluate languages with a different perspective. You want to or need to reuse the existing code, so interop with the old code's language must be possible.

Answer 5

It might be a factor of the knowledge economy of a particular company. For example, the bigger a company gets, or the less staff turnover they have, the harder it will be to replace competence, process and tooling to accommodate, for example, a new language. C/C++ has been around for quite some time, and many developers as well as development shops have that background.

Concerning banking applications, the reason is, I would guess, mostly because you have a close to metal environment which allows you to utilise realtime programming in a dependable fashion.

Answer 6

Every language has its pros and cons and no one language is best for every application. Programs in C++are harder to write, but can take advantage of platform-specific hardware and features. Because they're compiled, they also tend to run a bit faster. C# programs are easier to write, but aren't able to access underlying resources and can't be ported to non-Windows platforms very easily.

In short, it really depends on the application needs. If you need raw speed and explicit resource management, go with C++. If you want ease of coding and clarity, go with C#.