MrEd

Sorry to see you go Bill.  You were a great man in so very many ways.  The world has lost something special.

Ed

Charles - dude, your un-managed crusade is growing tiresome.  Easy on the pot shots.

K?

More code and demos less baloney.

1 day ago

I spent many years writing SSE-optimized numerical and imaging code in C++. After moving to C# and the .NET framework I swore I would never go back to that tedious, error-prone and mind-numbing endeavor. [...]

Please...computers are supposed to get easier, not harder.

Well stated.  Herb's assertion that almost all the value proposition revolves around performance is a risk.  If your app is spending a large amount of time waiting on IO, your gains might be rather trivial compared to the cost and risks associated with unmanaged code.  Futhermore, it's naive to believe that C++ has some innate "magical" performance sauce which you simply need to pour out to have your app perform.  Inefficient, poorly written code is just that - in any language.

I, for one, do not wish to relive the "bad old days" of buffer overruns, pointers to oblivion, and tedium associated with C/C++ unless it's absolutely necessary.

It could also be argued that many of Herb's remarks around Moore's Law were quite dyspeptic.  For example, he does not allude to any innovations in fundamental wafer fabrication techniques such as what we're beginning to see in 3D silicon:

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/23462-ibm-plans-3d-silicon-skysc

Nor does he allude to any innovation in basic wafer materials such as Graphene.

http://www.physorg.com/news125574730.html

It's not a steady-state universe - fabrication techniques and materials will likely change.  Long term soothsaying in this area is a very risky business and should not be presented asa priori fact.

Is C++ 11 really innovative, or is it just more "lipstick" on a very old pig?

Frankly, I wish the energy was invested is something really new and truly innovative...