Re: Visual C++ wont autcomplete?
"Daniel James" <wastebasket@nospam.aaisp.org> wrote in message
news:VA.00001149.0fe9fc9c@nospam.aaisp.org...
I do think it's important to keep a background level of dissatisfied noise
going here, to try to encourage other users to make their views felt.
True, it doesn't hurt to make it a continual pain point for them. But we
also need to make sure our noise is effective. Here, in this newsgroup, it
is not.
Interesting case in point ... MS did listen to the complaints about PWB
and did
improve it enormously between MSC6 and 7 -- it still wasn't great but it
became
usable. I'd really like to feel that they still had the commitment to
their own
products that they had then, and that this would prompt them to listen to
the
complaints about VS2005 and produce something better.
.... and the difference between then and now is not the level of our noise.
It's that now there is no competition for them, hence no financial incentive
for them to focus and improve VS2005 for C++ developers! I am encouraging
us to create competition.
For many Windows applications, standards are unnecessary (and bad when
they
slow down the compiler).
All you're really saying is that many existing Windows applications don't
use
the full power of the C++ language ... and you're concluding from that
that it
isn't necessary for a Windows compiler to support the full language! That
is
nonsense on so many levels that I scarcely know where to begin discussing
it.
Most existing C++ software for Windows was written with V6 (or earlier),
and so
used a compiler that couldn't compile large parts of the ISO C++ standard
library correctly, let alone some of the more adventurous code used in
(say)
the Boost libraries. If you can't compile it, you can't use it -- these
older
applications should not be takes as typical of what C++ is /capable/ of
being
used for on Windows (or any ther platform).
Moving forward with the ISO Standard is hugely important in ensuring that
the
C++ language has a future. It is unacceptable for a compiler not to
support the
ISO language fully and correctly.
It is true that I disdain the "full power" of the C++ language and view most
advanced usages of templates as unreadable and unsupportable. My apps (and
indeed most MFC apps that I've seen) don't use these and do rather well.
Certainly if you go to CodeProject and download some control, you can use
the control without Boost or even STL. That is because Windows programmers
(at least a certain class of them) don't embrace these things and still in
fact use things like BOOL instead of bool. For us, it doesn't matter what
other useless eccentricity the new standard has support for.
In fact, during the thread when I asked for a compiler switch to assume char
== wchar_t so our Windows apps could support Unicode with no additional
effort, I was repeatedly told that such a thing was impossible due to some
assumptions that had been there since Day 1. That was when I realized that
there is no way for C++ to retain its title as the premiere language for
Windows apps. To put it nicely, the C++ committee has other goals. To put
it bluntly, they've lost their way even more than MS has with their IDE's.
I do agree a conforming C++ compiler is necessary when building 3rd party,
cross platform libraries. I've had the good fortune of not needing any of
those! ;)
As long as the VCL source code would be made available, it really doesn't
matter if the company goes under or not.
It does, because the VCL source is in Borland's/CodeGear's own proprietary
Pascal dialect. If Borland/Codegear were to disappear then there would be
no
further development of their compiler and at best the VCL would be frozen
on
the platforms it currently supports. If Microsoft moved over entirely to
Win64,
or a new API for massively parallel architectures, say, VCL wouldn't even
run
on Windows any more.
True, I hadn't thought of that. It explains why people are defecting from
C++ Builder even though it is still an excellent product.
MS has essentially abandoned things like WTL, ATL Server, etc. by placing
it in open source. Many .NET libraries don't come with source code
either
(unlike MFC ones).
True, but I figure that if Microsoft disappears none of us will be too
worried
that we can no longer write for Windows ...
As an ex-Borlander, I still grit my teeth when I see things like this. Back
then it was, "Microsoft owns Windows, their compiler must be better.
Somehow...."
Anyway, MS can abandon any dev tool it wants to (remember J++?) but still be
in business.
I've used Eclipse for Java work, but not C++. It's a nice editor but a
HUGE resource-hog.
That's a good one... using Eclipse as an editor!
<smile> OK, Eclipse is much more than just an editor ... but I'm afraid I
do
still see an IDE as just an editor with bells and whistles.
.. that is what we were talking about at one point, though -- although we
didn't say so in so many words: Using Eclipse to do the source-code
construction part of the development work and using VS2005 to do the
compile/build/debug parts. I.e. using Eclipse as an Editor (with bells and
whistles).
But no one besides Joe complains about VS text editing.
I complain. Nothing like as much as Joe does, it's true, but I do complain
about the things the text editor can't do ... and about the things that go
beyond text editing but are still, essentially, part of the process of
producing source-code that the IDE can't do. From little things like
marking a
block and commenting or uncommenting it (by inserting/deleting "// " at
the
start of each line) to big things like refactoring (which would include
some of
the things that the ClassWiz and other wizards do/did).
You really need to invest in Visual Assist! :-)
-- David