Thread: Why do you prefer C#?

Originally Posted by brewbuck

If you can give another example that doesn't involve an obscure keyword that nobody uses then I'll concede that point.

How long did it take compilers to correctly implement partial template specialization, which although a bit obscure is also a very powerful and often-necessary tool? GCC had buggy implementations (often resulting in crashes) until 3.3.1, which was five years after the standard. Much of Boost didn't even work on GCC until 3.3.x, and as far as key third-party libraries, Boost is at the top of the pack.

One compiler on one piddly little platform. What are you going to do when a customer offers you $100k to port your application to AIX? Hell, even Java would be a better choice.

There are actually several C# compilers, some which are open source and cross-platform. Not all of them implement all the proprietary portions of the .NET framework (portions of the framework are not standard C#) but some do. And that "one platform" also happens to be the platform with 90% market share in the personal computer market, so if you're targeting an application for that market, being Windows-only is no big deal at all.

Obviously C# isn't the best tool for every job, but that doesn't mean it's never the best tool for any job. A hammer is a perfectly useful tool even if it can't drive screws; in fact you'd be foolish to spend your time driving nails with a screwdriver. Different situations are best handled in different programming languages, and C# happens to have a very nice and rather large niche for designing Windows GUI applications. Choose the tool based on the job, not based on your feelings about the tool.

Originally Posted by Cat

...A hammer is a perfectly useful tool even if it can't drive screws; in fact you'd be foolish to spend your time driving nails with a screwdriver...

I just have to add this, but though it may be foolish to only use a screwdriver instead of using a hammer when the need arises, only using a screwdriver prevents you from smacking your thumb and smashing it with the hammer
Translation: Even I used the right tool for the job (C#), I can still get burned [Don't like how the C# is? Too bad, 'cause the hammer is the right tool for the job!] (smashing my thumb), but if I use a screwdriver (C++), I'm perfectly safe (or safer).

Use the right tool for the job at hand. If you want to code a GUI in C++ and that is the right tool for you then so be it. But insisting that doing it any other way than your way makes you a tool.

I choose whatever will get the project done reliably and in due course. If the team does not know MFC it's probably not a good idea to force them to use it. If the team knows MFC better than Microsoft but does not know a lick of C# then prob would go with MFC even though it would take mere days to learn C#.

C# is a godsend and now with .NET 2.0 it's even better. Generics simply put are the best thing since sliced bread and beat the crapola out of those nasty untyped everything fits inside ArrayLists. There isn't one person I know who is familiar with .NET who prefers 1.1 so saying it's crappier in 2.0 is, to me, an uneducated statement since 2.0
is better in just about every aspect.

As I see it this debate has two sides. Those who are talking about C# vs C++ and those who are talking about Microsoft vs the world. This is not a debate about languages but more a debate about Microsoft. So I say get over it, stop bashing them because nothing is perfect, and use what works. I agree that Microsoft's practices are questionable at times but I have seen a move away from some of them. Namely these are some of the good things I see

• The free release of a very good development environment. It does not do MFC but that's not because Microsoft is stingy, it's because they are trying to tell people don't use MFC and use .NET. This dev environment is not a joke and is far better than anything we actually paid for years ago. Two thumbs way up to Microsoft for releasing this express version.
• Excellent documentation and help system with all of their products and their website has tons of free information, examples, and so forth.
• Ongoing support for deprecated OS's. Even though Microsoft has released Vista they are well aware that most of the world for now is going to stick with XP. They realized this as well when they released XP and supported 98SE for quite some time thereafter. This ongoing support approach allows me the user to choose when I want to upgrade. I think they are trying to step away from the upgrade or else approach and they are doing well.
• Continual fixes for Microsoft products. Fixes come out faster than bugs are found and while they never address them all (who can?) they do end up with a very good product in the end. XP sucked at first but then we had SP1 and now with SP2 it's probably the best OS out there. Vista will be the same eventually. This pattern has been evident ever since Windows 95. Product release sucks and then they fix it. With each Service Pack their products do get better unlike some patches for other things.
• Continual support for DirectX and Direct3D. Microsoft said that one day you could run any Direct3D game on any video card so long as the drivers worked and for the most part they have been dead on. Let's face it, this works like a charm today.
• Microsoft's refusal to sit on their laurels and continual development of new innovative products. It seems like they are always doing something.

And, no, I don't work for Microsoft. But without their products I would consume much more Advil at work.

Originally Posted by brewbuck

Ironically, the few times I've used C# I've felt comfortable with it. If it only had true templates, I'd probably be using it in preference to C++.

What is it about C# generics that you dislike?

The only truly annoying thing I find about them is that you can't constrain on the presence of an operator, and the workarounds are less elegant (e.g. IComparable compared to operator<). It's something I'd hope for them to do in the future.

What are you going to do when a customer offers you $100k to port your application to AIX?

That's not my business, but I would expect our marketing guy to ask him if that's monthly payments and if he already has aquired the (third party) database licences costing a multitude of what he offers himself or if we should simply add that to the bill. As I said, I'm not talking about two buttons and a textbox.

For our product (that is not supposed to go to the customer, but used internally) vendor independence is totally mood because for example there is only one, maybe two database vendors that can support our infrastructure commercially. And yes, we do use their drivers for that 5% extra performance. Does that make us dependent on a third party ? Totally. If Larry grabs a gun and shoots every single one of his 50.000 employees, economically, the company I work for would be toast, too. If Billy Boy revokes our Licences, we would be smashed. But then, we rely on Germany not changing it's privacy laws, we rely on our house to not be torn down by tornadoes or floods, we rely on many things we have no control over.

What would be less Microsoft-centric would be coding to an actual standard which is accepted somewhere other than on Windows platforms.

As I said, for every job, there is a tool that works best and as C# drawbacks don't concern us, right now C# and vendor dependent C++ (MFC) work best. Somethings else would cost more money and business is about money, not about "the right thing". What I code in private is a totally different story.