Commentary on Industry Move to C++

Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Gary Scott]

Hi,

I've had some time now to consider the recent trends of my industry
moving new projects to C++.  As a lead system test engineer, I am now
inclined to approve of this trend.  I anticipate much more business
(testing) in the future due to a significant increase in the number of
software anomalies.  This I feel will keep me gainfully employed for a
number of additional years while also making my job much more
interesting (more challenging anomalies to solve).

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

"Gary Scott" <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> wrote in message news:3B859FCD.5FEA40DD@lmtas.lmco.com...
> Hi,
>
> I've had some time now to consider the recent trends of my industry
> moving new projects to C++.  As a lead system test engineer, I am now
> inclined to approve of this trend.  I anticipate much more business
> (testing) in the future due to a significant increase in the number of
> software anomalies.  This I feel will keep me gainfully employed for a
> number of additional years while also making my job much more
> interesting (more challenging anomalies to solve).

I don't know what is your industry. But industry in general has
already moved to Java and VB and will be moving pretty soon to C#.
According to recent statistics (don't remember the source - Gartner?...)
number of programmers using Java is karger than the number of
programmers using C++

A.L.

It must surely be better ...

[Petter Fryklund]

to be one of few excellent than ome of many mediocre ...

Re: It must surely be better ...

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

"Petter Fryklund" <qsbpefr@esavionics.se> wrote in message news:9m5898$9i$1@newstoo.ericsson.se...

> to be one of few excellent than ome of many mediocre ...
>

What if you cannot put your excellence into the pot, or use it to put the mortgage?...

If you read science-fiction, then there is a book Cyberiad by Lem. Quote: "Chinese Fu was
taught by Chinese Ku how to kill dragoons. Education lasted 50 years. When Fu graduated
with distinctions, he wanted to test his skills. Unfortunately, he was unable to find a dragoon".

A.L.

Re: It must surely be better ...

[Petter Fryklund]

Guess I'm fortunate then.

Andrzej Lewandowski wrote in message <3b864e80_3@news3.prserv.net>...
>
>"Petter Fryklund" <qsbpefr@esavionics.se> wrote in message
news:9m5898$9i$1@newstoo.ericsson.se...
>
>> to be one of few excellent than ome of many mediocre ...
>>
>
>What if you cannot put your excellence into the pot, or use it to put the
mortgage?...
>
>If you read science-fiction, then there is a book Cyberiad by Lem. Quote:
"Chinese Fu was
>taught by Chinese Ku how to kill dragoons. Education lasted 50 years. When
Fu graduated
>with distinctions, he wanted to test his skills. Unfortunately, he was
unable to find a dragoon".
>
>A.L.
>
>

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Gary Scott]

Aerospace/embedded processors.  There's absolutely no way anyone would
consider Java given current processor performance and real-time
processing requirements.

Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:
> 
> "Gary Scott" <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> wrote in message news:3B859FCD.5FEA40DD@lmtas.lmco.com...
> > Hi,
> >
> > I've had some time now to consider the recent trends of my industry
> > moving new projects to C++.  As a lead system test engineer, I am now
> > inclined to approve of this trend.  I anticipate much more business
> > (testing) in the future due to a significant increase in the number of
> > software anomalies.  This I feel will keep me gainfully employed for a
> > number of additional years while also making my job much more
> > interesting (more challenging anomalies to solve).
> 
> I don't know what is your industry. But industry in general has
> already moved to Java and VB and will be moving pretty soon to C#.
> According to recent statistics (don't remember the source - Gartner?...)
> number of programmers using Java is karger than the number of
> programmers using C++
> 
> A.L.

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[James Rogers]

Even more direct than that, look at the license agreement for the Java
development kit. It specifically states that the user will not use the
kit to produce software to control airplanes, or air traffic control
systems.

I assume Sun has some reasons for insisting you know not to use Java
for these purposes.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA

Gary Scott wrote:
> 
> Aerospace/embedded processors.  There's absolutely no way anyone would
> consider Java given current processor performance and real-time
> processing requirements.
> 
> Andrzej Lewandowski wrote:

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Al Christians]

James Rogers wrote:
> 
> 
> I assume Sun has some reasons for insisting you know not to use Java
> for these purposes.
> 

They say it's because of timing -- ie because of garbage collection 
-- they can't make it a sure thing that it will accomplish anything
in a given amount of time.  But they also say that it's not an 
admission that it's likely to crash or give the wrong answers.

That's really a JVM issue, not a Java issue -- there are many 
languages running on JVM these days.


Al

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[James Rogers]

Al Christians wrote:
> 
> James Rogers wrote:
> >
> >
> > I assume Sun has some reasons for insisting you know not to use Java
> > for these purposes.
> >
> 
> They say it's because of timing -- ie because of garbage collection
> -- they can't make it a sure thing that it will accomplish anything
> in a given amount of time.  But they also say that it's not an
> admission that it's likely to crash or give the wrong answers.
> 
> That's really a JVM issue, not a Java issue -- there are many
> languages running on JVM these days.

Timing is a JVM issue. It is also a Java issue.

My experience is that the Java language in general, and Java standard
API classes in particular, are relatively inefficient. Java
static data members are allocated on a stack. All other Java non
primitive data items are allocated dynamically. 

Aside from the fact that additional overhead is involved in
marking and deallocating dynamic memory, the most common Java
programming models allocate a lot of memory when other languages
like Ada, C, Basic, Pascal, etc will not need to allocate memory.
This addiction to allocation produces performance problems that
affect both timing and memory utilization.

For instance, using a Java collection, such as a HashMap to store
values associated with unique keys requires that all items stored
must be instances of classes, not primitive types. How, then, do
you store numeric types in a HashMap? Simple. You convert the
numeric type to its corresponding wrapper class.

The primary reason to use a HashMap is for rapid access to the
values contained therein. If you want to total values read from
an input stream by key value you will need to increment the values
stored in the HashMap. Unfortunately, the numeric wrapper classes
are incapable of performing math operations. You must convert the
wrapper class object to a primitive type, perform the 
calculations, then create a new numeric wrapper object and put it
in the HashMap under the same key. All this conversion, allocation,
and reassignment is expensive. Timing is affected greatly.

(Of course, each of those objects must be eventually deallocated
or "collected" by the GC, which even if it were deterministic would
still have a serious affect on timing.)

Java also demonstrates plenty of unpredictability with its thread
model. Releasing a thread from a "wait" call is accomplished by
having another thread call the "notify" or the "notifyAll"
method. The "notify" method causes the virtual machine to release
one thread from the wait state. There is no sense of a queue in
the "wait" state corresponding to an Ada entry queue. You have no
way of knowing which thread will be affected by a "notify" 
call. It may be one that must immediately return to the "wait"
state because its boundary condition has not been satisfied. If
so, then you can encounter a deadlock because the expected
thread was not activated.

The common wisdom is that one should never use "notify". Instead,
one should always use "notifyAll". "notifyAll" releases all
threads from the "wait" state. This avoids deadlock, because one
of the waiting threads will discover a satisfied boundary
condition and continue. All other threads will have to return to
the "wait" state. This approach avoids deadlocks but produces
timing variations, depending on the number of threads in the
"wait" state. Java provides no remedy for this timing issue.

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Michael Bode]

Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com> writes:
  
> They say it's because of timing -- ie because of garbage collection 
> -- they can't make it a sure thing that it will accomplish anything
> in a given amount of time.  But they also say that it's not an 
> admission that it's likely to crash or give the wrong answers.
> 
> That's really a JVM issue, not a Java issue -- there are many 
> languages running on JVM these days.

Just a data point: Siemens is propagating Java for real time
development these days.

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[Robert Dewar]

"Andrzej Lewandowski" <lewandoREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote in message news:<3b85b1fc_1@news3.prserv.net>...

> I don't know what is your industry. But industry in general has
> already moved to Java and VB and will be moving pretty soon to C#.
> According to recent statistics (don't remember the source - 
> Gartner?...) number of programmers using Java is karger than the 
> number of programmers using C++


And the number of programmers using WORD macros is no doubt even
higher, as is the number of programmers using Visual Basic and COBOL,
but raw numbers like this don't tell you much.

Certainly in large segments of the industry, in particular the
segments in which Ada is a large player, Java has only a slight
presence, and is unlikely to make substantial inroads in the near
future. It will be a while before we have either a commercial plane
or a military fighter, or an air traffic control system entirely
programmed in Java, if ever. As for the C# comment, this is mere
speculation -- a lot of observers, even those who think that .NET will
be wildly successful (itself not a forgone conclusion) think that
other languages will dominate C# in this environment.

Just because Microsoft champions something does not mean it will
succeed. Remember that OS/2 version 1 was a Microsoft production,
as were the pre 3.0 windows versions.

Re: Commentary on Industry Move to C++

[David Botton]

> I don't know what is your industry. But industry in general has
> already moved to Java and VB and will be moving pretty soon to C#.

Perhaps in IT shops (who have never used C/C++ or Ada for the most part),
but not in applications or system development for any significant industry
or market.

> According to recent statistics (don't remember the source - Gartner?...)
> number of programmers using Java is karger than the number of
> programmers using C++

That is because the term "programmer" is used very loosely :-)

David Botton