It's superior because Change Is Bad(tm), and the familiar is comfortable.

I wish I could troll half as good as you! Don't worry, I'm taking notes.

Paint.NET is a "simple pixel art program". And Allegro is an old DOS blitting library. Ignorance is bliss, they say.

Paint.NET handles the same amount and types of data just fine. It's photo editing software. Have you ever used it? It has unlimited undos, layers, filters, plugins, etc. No, it doesn't have all the features that Photoshop has, but the language is not preventing anybody from writing those features.

It doesn't have those features because it hasn't been around as long and doesn't have as many people working on it as Photoshop—nor is it trying to be an exact replacement for The Gimp (which is already free). It has nothing to do with limitations of C#.

When I use Paint.NET to edit my photos, I don't ever sit there and think "boy, I wish this were faster." It's sufficiently fast for the task at hand, and that's all that matters. If maximum speed were the goal of every project, then we'd all be writing in hand optimized machine code.

Yes, many times. I like it, for simple graphics editing is very good.

Does it have the same performance with Photoshop in the features used by Publishing Studios?

But the point of this discussion is not if a program or a programming language is sufficient for small tasks.

I have said, right from the start, that C++ is used in big heavy software.

C# and Java are fine for smaller tasks.

C# may also be capable of matching C++ in heavy tasks like databases, for example.

Java certainly is not, due to the way it handles collections and arrays.

All right, so what is "big, heavy software"? Give us a concrete definition. Is there a minimum of CPU usage? A certain number of hard drive accesses? A required number of lines of code? What are the criteria for something to be "big, heavy software"?

What I observed in this discussion was:
the claim was made that all major apps are written in c.
Everytime a major c#/java app was mentioned the definition of a major app was changed excluding all non c++ apps.

I also think that c++ has a speed advantage.
But that doesn't mean it's the only option.

And the other advantages other languages have will lead to the fact that they will get used despite their speed problem. With better hardware speed becomes more unimportant from day to day.
Ease of development, bug tracking, changeability will become more valuable. C++ can't keep up in this categories.

I use C# for any private gui development.
And the only reason I use C++ for developing games is that there are no native librarys I like yet (maybe this will change in the future).
There is XNA as well. But I don't like it that much.

At work I develop software with Java.

Not in the scientific field, they won't. It is a mistake to think that ease of development, bug tracking and changeability necessarily come with speed penalties. E.g. ever heard of 'Vala' language? The idea is silly even to me, but basically it is C# that is translated to C and then compiled. So, they get all of the benefits of C#'s syntaxical sugar, with all of the benefits of C. I don't think Vala overall is that great, but it's an example of what axilmar wants (and what I want too): an easy to use language that does not sacrifice any execution speed.

I don't really know the history behind C# or Java, but I am 100% sure that if C# or Java were somehow compiled to machine code, all you fans of those languages would still like them, because you as coders only care about RAD and related buzzwords. You have come to accept the speed penalties as a necessary evil, because by chance the heavily marketed C# and Java had those speed penalties.

Well, I don't see that it is a necessary evil in general (it is if you use those languages). Vala is an example of that. D is an example of that. Neither of those two are perfect, but they are steps in the right direction.

He has already defined that all heavy software uses C++. So obviously, any C++ application is a heavy application.

Actually, the latest version of Mono lets you go all the way to machine code at compilation time. It then outputs machine language code for the app and all dependencies.

I did not change the definition of a major app from the beginning of my post. I am sorry if I was not clear enough. Let me try again.

I consider the following apps big and major:

1) databases that are able to support a big number of transactions per second. Db2, Oracle, etc.

2) office software that can handle very complex documents with minimum delay. Microsoft Office, Open Office etc.

3) Web browsers that allow for many tabs (20, 30 tabs etc) to be open without much memory overhead. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome.

4) Torrent applications that can manage thousands of peers per second. uTorrent, for example.

5) Desktop environments like KDE or Gnome.

6) Complex algorithms like Map-Reduce.

7) photoediting software like Photoshop that can handle big pictures (10,20,30 megapixels) with ease, with multiple effects and layers.

I have nothing against Java or C#. But the truth is that any application with object complex relationships and complex algorithms and big data sets will have lower performance than if programmed with C/C++.

I did not see anyone argue on the coding examples I gave. Why?

As for Allegro, I wonder why it is written in C. Why not in C#, for example? Or Java? since these languages are very fast?

And why there are no 'big' games in these languages?

Ugh, why do you go on? (:-X Why do I read?)
You can all agree the languages you mention do different stuff. I had a revelation a year ago or so. I was talking to somebody and the discussion somehow came to doing your own programming. He mentioned he used Javascript. WTF ?! Javascript ?!Yes. And he told me about all the projects he had in javascript and it was really interesting. He even did profiling and optimized functions (the proper mathematical kind founded optimization). And I thought: "Yeah, if it works for him, why not?" Up until that point I blamed myself for not learning assembly. I'm happy with C++. (Everyone seems to be harsh on C++. Give it some slack: it works terrifhack.) I overly enjoy optimizing at the level of C++. Some people like to do it on assembly level. Whilst others like to get as much functionality as possible, without considering the load they put on a system.
You can't argue over what people will like doing in the future. But what is needed for future business: being (overly) efficient or getting things fast? Both of-course. What tool will be used? Who knows?::)
Mr. Leverton if you really want to get the last word, abuse your power. Something like:

Only then without the quote tags...

BTW in the LHC they use custom built circuitry to do the first pass of data analysis. How's that for lightweight efficiency?

I remember heated discussions like this over 10 years ago, except it was ASM vs C, C vs C++ or even reinvent the wheel vs using libraries (yes, there were people that believed real programmers don't use libraries!). Now it's C++ vs Java/C#. The arguments are always the same. Why doesn't axilmar go all the way and favour asm over C++? After all, if he's processing massive datasets, even one CPU cycle in an inner loop will make all the difference.

You are right. It's not worth the fuss.

But I want to explain why we are arguing.

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.

So I don't see the point that you are arguing against the fact that c++ will be used less.

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.

We probably tatalkedbout different things all the time whwhichas why we couldn't get to an agreement.
I hope you can see that now too. Let's all be friends again

What I can't ignore though:

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.