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Python yes as it is helpful in many different places but Haskell and OCaml?! I know this is HN but these languages are pretty niche and only really used to any

Python yes as it is helpful in many different places but Haskell and OCaml?! I know this is HN but these languages are pretty niche and only really used to any serious degree within academia. C++ is still one of the most flexible languages for application development on every major platform and with C++11 it has had a massive resurgence. Compare how things were a few years ago to the massive amounts of work places like Microsoft are putting into their C++ technology offerings. Visual Studio 6 all the way to Visual Studio 2010 had god awful C++ support outside of what Microsoft wanted to offer. With 2012 and now 2013 things are a hell of a lot better. Check out Microsoft's GoingNative 2013 stuff. As for C it is a great language but it is pretty much only for either old stuff or system level stuff. In the real world I see people pick C++ over C if possible.

orclev 13y ago
The point is, C is worth learning because of what it teaches you. Likewise Haskell and OCaml are worth learning because they'll make you a better programmer. C++ is only worth learning if you're looking for a career in the gaming industry and therefore need to know it to get a job. C++ is a terrible language that does pretty much everything wrong. The fact that it's only with C++11 that the language starts to become bearable should tell you something. Learning C++ will not make you a better programmer, it will make you a more employable programmer, although even there something like Java or PHP will make you a even more employable programmer. If you're doing any embedded programming you're going to be using C. C++ is pretty much exclusively used in the gaming industry, and there mostly because of historical reasons more than anything else (all the popular frameworks are written in C++).
- asynchronous13 13y ago
  > C++ is pretty much exclusively used in the gaming industry I'm curious how you've come to that conclusion? C++ is used in most of the major web browsers, most of the major database engines, most of the major office program suites, it's widely used at Adobe, Microsoft and Google... C++ is in the top 5 of most language popularity rankings (TIOBE, langpop). Sure, C++ has its issues, but claiming it's only used in one industry is way off base.
  - orclev 13y ago
    Most new development isn't done in C++, all the things you're referencing are primarily legacy applications (legacy in the sense that they were originally written a long time ago, not deprecated). Most new software even at the companies you list isn't written in C++. MS for instance has thrown their weight behind C# as their go to language. Google among many things has Go to replace most of the things they used to use C++ for. I don't have any insight on Adobes usage, although I do know that most of their dev tools are built on top of Eclipse which is JVM based. As for office suites, there's three of them out there, MS, which is C#, Apples which is ObjectiveC, and LibreOffice which so far as I know is Java. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a lot of the DB engines are done in C++, but I also would expect quite a few of them to be done in C as well. DB engine is a rather specialized area that demands the best performance you can possibly achieve, so something low level like C or C++ is to be expected. In order to achieve top performance you need to sacrifice ease of use so a really basic language like C or C++ is expected. Interestingly enough looking at the source code for Firefox there is indeed some C++, but there's actually a lot more JavaScript in the Firefox source tree than there is C++.
    - asynchronous13 13y ago
      Microsoft's Office suite is primarily C++. There was an attempt to start using more C# a couple years ago, but it's still mostly C++. On a closed-source project, it's hard to get the details. But the open source projects, however, we can get a very clear picture. OpenOffice: [1] 10.4 million lines of C++ 1.2 million lines of Java *edit* noticed you mentioned LibreOffice, not OpenOffice LibreOffice: [2] 5.7 million lines of C++ 0.4 million lines of Java Firefox: [3] 4.0 million lines of C++ 1.8 million lines of C 1.7 million lines of javascript MySql: [4] 7.0 million lines of C++ 4.0 million lines of C 0.4 million lines of javascript 0.3 million lines of Java The point I'm trying to make is that C++ is widely used, and definitely not used just for gaming. > Most new development isn't done in C++ Whether or not C++ is the right choice for new development is a different question. Github posted their top 20 languages for new repositories in 2013 [5]. C++ is #6 and has more new projects than C, Objective-C and C#. Even if it's fading in popularity, that's still a lot of new projects in C++. [1] http://www.ohloh.net/p/openoffice/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/openoffice/analyses/latest/languages_... [2] http://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest/languages... [3] https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_su... [4] http://www.ohloh.net/p/mysql/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/mysql/analyses/latest/languages_summa... [5] http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-for-2013-so-far/ http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-for-2013-so-fa...
- InTheSwiss 13y ago
  I agree C and Haskell are both worth learning as they will teach you a lot of should make you a better programmer due to the different point of view they give you towards development however this question was if learning C++ was worth learning. The answer to that question, IMHO, is yes which is what the OP wanted to know. Had they asked what languages they should learn I would put other languages above C++ but that wasn't their question :)
betterunix 13y ago
"Haskell and OCaml?! I know this is HN but these languages are pretty niche and only really used to any serious degree within academia" Maybe so, but the programmers I know who have switched from C++ to Haskell/OCaml/F# never seem to regret it. They are getting more done in less time, and spending a greater fraction of their time writing good software than tracking down annoying low-level bugs. The small trade-off in performance does not seem to be an issue, and in the few places where it is, some C or assembly code invoked via an FFI solves the problem. "C++ is still one of the most flexible languages for application development" Only if you are not counting the overhead of actually getting a complex C++ application to work reliably. Even the new abstractions in C++11 and C++14 seem to force programmers to deal with low-level issues than in almost every case are a distraction from the high-level problem being solved.
- kenjackson 13y ago
  How many top tier games are written in Haskell or OCaml? If you did I bet you'd be less productive than one using C++. All languages make tradeoffs. You need to understand your domain and the tradeoffs associated with them.

orclev 13y ago

The point is, C is worth learning because of what it teaches you. Likewise Haskell and OCaml are worth learning because they'll make you a better programmer. C++ is only worth learning if you're looking for a career in the gaming industry and therefore need to know it to get a job. C++ is a terrible language that does pretty much everything wrong. The fact that it's only with C++11 that the language starts to become bearable should tell you something. Learning C++ will not make you a better programmer, it will make you a more employable programmer, although even there something like Java or PHP will make you a even more employable programmer. If you're doing any embedded programming you're going to be using C. C++ is pretty much exclusively used in the gaming industry, and there mostly because of historical reasons more than anything else (all the popular frameworks are written in C++).

asynchronous13 13y ago
> C++ is pretty much exclusively used in the gaming industry I'm curious how you've come to that conclusion? C++ is used in most of the major web browsers, most of the major database engines, most of the major office program suites, it's widely used at Adobe, Microsoft and Google... C++ is in the top 5 of most language popularity rankings (TIOBE, langpop). Sure, C++ has its issues, but claiming it's only used in one industry is way off base.
- orclev 13y ago
  Most new development isn't done in C++, all the things you're referencing are primarily legacy applications (legacy in the sense that they were originally written a long time ago, not deprecated). Most new software even at the companies you list isn't written in C++. MS for instance has thrown their weight behind C# as their go to language. Google among many things has Go to replace most of the things they used to use C++ for. I don't have any insight on Adobes usage, although I do know that most of their dev tools are built on top of Eclipse which is JVM based. As for office suites, there's three of them out there, MS, which is C#, Apples which is ObjectiveC, and LibreOffice which so far as I know is Java. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a lot of the DB engines are done in C++, but I also would expect quite a few of them to be done in C as well. DB engine is a rather specialized area that demands the best performance you can possibly achieve, so something low level like C or C++ is to be expected. In order to achieve top performance you need to sacrifice ease of use so a really basic language like C or C++ is expected. Interestingly enough looking at the source code for Firefox there is indeed some C++, but there's actually a lot more JavaScript in the Firefox source tree than there is C++.
  - asynchronous13 13y ago
    Microsoft's Office suite is primarily C++. There was an attempt to start using more C# a couple years ago, but it's still mostly C++. On a closed-source project, it's hard to get the details. But the open source projects, however, we can get a very clear picture. OpenOffice: [1] 10.4 million lines of C++ 1.2 million lines of Java *edit* noticed you mentioned LibreOffice, not OpenOffice LibreOffice: [2] 5.7 million lines of C++ 0.4 million lines of Java Firefox: [3] 4.0 million lines of C++ 1.8 million lines of C 1.7 million lines of javascript MySql: [4] 7.0 million lines of C++ 4.0 million lines of C 0.4 million lines of javascript 0.3 million lines of Java The point I'm trying to make is that C++ is widely used, and definitely not used just for gaming. > Most new development isn't done in C++ Whether or not C++ is the right choice for new development is a different question. Github posted their top 20 languages for new repositories in 2013 [5]. C++ is #6 and has more new projects than C, Objective-C and C#. Even if it's fading in popularity, that's still a lot of new projects in C++. [1] http://www.ohloh.net/p/openoffice/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/openoffice/analyses/latest/languages_... [2] http://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest/languages... [3] https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_summary https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_su... [4] http://www.ohloh.net/p/mysql/analyses/latest/languages_summary http://www.ohloh.net/p/mysql/analyses/latest/languages_summa... [5] http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-for-2013-so-far/ http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-for-2013-so-fa...
InTheSwiss 13y ago
I agree C and Haskell are both worth learning as they will teach you a lot of should make you a better programmer due to the different point of view they give you towards development however this question was if learning C++ was worth learning. The answer to that question, IMHO, is yes which is what the OP wanted to know. Had they asked what languages they should learn I would put other languages above C++ but that wasn't their question :)

betterunix 13y ago

"Haskell and OCaml?! I know this is HN but these languages are pretty niche and only really used to any serious degree within academia" Maybe so, but the programmers I know who have switched from C++ to Haskell/OCaml/F# never seem to regret it. They are getting more done in less time, and spending a greater fraction of their time writing good software than tracking down annoying low-level bugs. The small trade-off in performance does not seem to be an issue, and in the few places where it is, some C or assembly code invoked via an FFI solves the problem. "C++ is still one of the most flexible languages for application development" Only if you are not counting the overhead of actually getting a complex C++ application to work reliably. Even the new abstractions in C++11 and C++14 seem to force programmers to deal with low-level issues than in almost every case are a distraction from the high-level problem being solved.

kenjackson 13y ago
How many top tier games are written in Haskell or OCaml? If you did I bet you'd be less productive than one using C++. All languages make tradeoffs. You need to understand your domain and the tradeoffs associated with them.