Well, if C# and Java are so fast, it could have been written in those languages. I don't see how extremely experienced programmers that can write C in their sleep have a problem with fancier and easier languages like Java and C#.

I have a friend that programs embedded devices and micro-controllers. He uses asm. If he says 'asm is better than C in this domain', should I tell him that he is wrong? he is obviously right.

I don't see what the fuss is all about, and I really don't understand the reaction of the Allegro.cc crowd. You all support Matthew, perhaps because he is an American and I am not, or because he is the site owner. But your reaction is not logical. If you check the facts, the numbers, the performance, you will see that I am right.

We never denied your numbers. And we never denied the c++ performance is better.
We just denied that not only C++ is able to write major apps.
That was because you definition of major app was/is different from our definition.

When we said you definition of major apps changed over time you said that was not the case.
That means: You meant the same all the time but because you said it differently we understood it differently in every post.
At first you definition of a major app seemed be to be the same as ours.
And with that definition your statement that only c++ can be used was wrong in our opinion.

And all we said that c++ will be used less in the future because for most projects this difference in performance will be unimportant.
Then you started to say that c++ will not be used less because it is the only tool to write major apps in.
But apps that are major apps after your definition are needed less then other shabby gui/server apps which c#/java be more then sufficient for.

As said above we never wanted to argue about performance because we know this fact.
It isn't arguable.

The only thing we argued about was the fact that c++ will be used less and isn't the only language todays apps can be written in.

You missed the important part: can be used within other languages

Written in C means it can be used from: C, C++, Java, C#, Ruby... other ones.

So if you want a library that can be used in much languages you choose c.
Which doesn't mean that it is the ONLY language you can write a library in.

I don't know where you come from and I don't care. This is the internetz!
Saying something like that is a defamation. I would appreciate if you won't say something like this again.

Because Allegro is old. It's origins are what, in 1990 or so? Java and C# didn't exist.

If he says that ASM allows him to write faster and smaller code, then he is right. If he says that all major micro controllers must be programmed in ASM because of that, then he is wrong.

Statement 1: Generally speaking, C++ (and any similar language) will have better performance and less memory requirements than the equivalent code written in Java and C# (and other similar languages).

Statement 2: Most people find that Java and C# are much easier to use and write error free code than with C++.

Statement 3: For most applications, the ease-of-development (Statement 2) trumps the performance loss (Statement 1).

Do we not all agree on those three things? The only reason why I'm still in this discussion is because I find it funny that you are clinging on to your "major application must be written C++" idea.

Your thinking is something like:

* C++ has better performance than C#
* Better performance is good
* Therefore C++ is the only choice for applications that max the CPU.

You should take it a step farther and replace C++ with hand written machine code and C# with C++.

Let's say the C# applications runs 5% slower. You say that is unacceptable performance. Guess what? The C# application running on today's PC is faster than the C++ application running on last year's PC. So I guess all of those people need to upgrade their hardware because the performance is no longer acceptable—because a different environment is faster.

Your fascination with maximum performance must lead you to believe that every "major software" must always be installed only on the very fastest machines available because anything less would be uncivilized—you wouldn't be getting the best performance possible.

But no, what really happens is people run software on hardware that can run the software at speeds that are acceptable to them. It's quite possible (and likely) that C# runs at the same acceptable level as C++ does to the user, even on major applications.

Since Photoshop is a major application to you, I'll use it as my example. The user has non-functional requirements like "a ten megapixal image must be able to be resized into a thumbnail in less than one second." Even if C++ takes 0.01 seconds and C# takes 0.5 seconds, it doesn't matter. Both satisfy the requirement.

Your definition of a "major application" is basically: anything that requires more speed than C# or Java can provide. And in that case, I agree 100%! C# or Java will never be used in that definition of a major application.

Yes, but in that area it IS better, mainly because you're limited to how much code you can store, very limited with ram and CPU power, etc. There's no shortage of any of that on any of today's computers, so there is no reason to use ASM in most cases.

But you are only supplying heavily biased data that isn't really meaningful at all. I didn't see you present any cold hard benchmarks or anything like that.

Either way, like Christopher and Matthew said, we're not denying that C++ is faster. At least I'm not. I'm just saying that the speed difference doesn't matter much at all.

But you can't easily bind EVERY OTHER language to it.

With C, you can bind Java, Python, Perl, Scheme, C#, ObjC and pretty much every other language to it with relative ease.

the use of Java pretty much diminishes the need to use any other language.

Your argument is morphing again! You went from must be in C++ to should be in C++ in one post!

Allegro 5 is not old. It could have been written in other languages.

There are a lot of better languages out there.

Incidentally, has this [shootout.alioth.debian.org] been posted yet? I like that metric, faulty as it is, more than the platitudes expressed in this thread.

Here are up-to-date benchmarks game measurements -

Isn't allegro 5 a rewrite?

Kill C++. There are a lot of better languages out there.

I would prefer Pascal. But most people won't. So I vote for C#. With the introduction of Mono, it's multi-platform. And Mono is able to compile C#. So speed shouldn't be a big problem.