Bubba

Since I'm looking for C++ programming jobs I thought it may look good on a resume to at least get certified.

I went ahead and got certified at NCSA (National Computer Science Academy). Then I thought I would get a Microsoft certification for Visual C++.

Guess what? They only offer VC++ certs. in the realm of .NET. There are no online certifications for C++ outside of .NET. So I have to start reading my huge .NET book and use their hideous new stuff just to get a MS VC++ cert. How ridiculous.

I don't know how most of you feel about certifications but for right now it's all I can do. With my job I really don't have time to finish my B.S. at the moment.

BTW: Have any of you started diving into .NET yet and if so what are your feelings on it? I'm looking more for experiences with the framework type posts, not opinions about whether or not MS is trying to take over C++.

MacGyver

I looked into the .NET framework and messed with the Visual C++ side of .NET. The downside is learning the entire API, sort of like Java's API. It's an entire new world of stuff that is... um... annoying.

With that said, I do not have any real experience with .NET other than just messing with it for a bit. I suppose it wouldn't hurt for me to investigate it further, but generally, if you get into .NET, a lot of the code examples I saw were in C#, and that's what MS is pushing, not their mangled version of C/C++.

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prog-bman

.Net is nice but the CLI syntax looks a bit off from what I have seen. But from what I seen of you, you would have .Net mastered in a short time. Its basically a big stinking wrapper on top of the API and COM with some SQL thrown in there. But it is nice when you are trying to design a nice GUI without much hastle.

brewbuck

You know, I primed myself to hate C# from the beginning. But when I started fooling with it, I realized that it's actually kind of cool. A lot of crap comes out of Microsoft, but the .NET API is one of their shining achievements, IMHO.

But since I love templates, and C# doesn't have them (at least in the sense that C++ does), I stay away.

zacs7

It is tempting, for example if you're looking for a function on MSDN, and you find one that does what you want, scroll down and see it's for .NET only

However, .NET seems slow (runtime wise)... is there any evidence to support this? For example benchmarks? I've searched but to no avail.

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CornedBee

Not really, no. There are some comparative benchmarks, especially against Java and C++, but I've yet to see a convincing one. In general, .Net performance can be assumed to be on par with Java's, and it has the same trade-offs against C++ as Java, too. That is, the byte-code JIT/interpretation is something of a slowdown, which is offset by the efficiency of automatic garbage collection opposed to careless C++ memory management.

I like C# and the .Net framework just fine, but I wouldn't use C++/CLI unless I had to write a .Net interface for a legacy library.

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CornedBee

"There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be, any programming language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Flon's Law