Jay Schmelzer - Working on the VB Core Team

hi guys,

i must admit that somehow the noise about vb.net and c# in the 2005 generation of visual studio (congratulations to RTM btw ) hurts me a bit and i don't mean "noise" in a negative way.. it's good to see progress with these two languages and the clr itself, of course.

[ caution... i'm wild ]

the thing is.... I'm into C++... a lot. native or CLI. i always can't help it but think that innovation and focus of the whole .net wave is the fancy "simple" (syntaxwise) languages.

just compare the number of vb/c# videos on channel9 to the number of c++ videos. yes i realize that C++ is muuuch older and established.. but that also means we're the majority.

maybe it's the not so clear direction; what role native c++ and c++/cli (and the interaction of both) will play in the future. I've seen Herb Sutter's talk highlighting the (shared) future of C++0x and the c++/cli... most of it is stuff that's already integrated into linq for C# etc and downloadable via msdn. the dreams of a c++ guy are downloadable in a C# flavor. to a degree i jump to the ceiling and enjoy what C# brings us in every iteration. to a (sometimes larger) degree i 'm like the guy who isn't allowed to play with the other children in the byte sand. left behind. even forced to stay in his corner (a beautiful and large corner) by the standards.

standards have been one of c++'s strenth ever since. but i feel chained to the wall by them. maybe a more open compiler architecture (phoenix, available to research community, but otherwise restricted access) will change a lot for us. maybe by now we would 've been able to see what the new languages features can bring to the c++ table.

c++ is not flashy. never meant to be. C#/vb is new (relatively) so i understand that the majority of evangelism is centered around these two (don't take that as an offence charles and robert. in  no way i'm here to critisize your work! on the contrary..). it's just what bothers me during the last few years.  like the slow giant with little insects moving around it very quickly so he can't defend himself against them.
is it a problem caused by ms marketing? forgetting to cheer up the c++ giant?  is it the c++ standards moving too slow because they have to be extremely careful for obvious reasons? is it that people buy vs2005 because of the new langauges and stick with their older IDE and older c++ compilers out of pure fear? or are the expectations that .net will save the IT world too high and plain old native c++ (and its native colleagues) will dominate as it always has?

don't know. i'll stop here

to my defence i bring forward that i'm sick. so don't blame me too much for somehow ripping this post. i just feel that i had to tell you guys what i think about the current issue with c++ "hype" or the lack thereof.

i love C# (not so much vb ) but that's really biased an opinion). But We're More.  don't forget that.

i know i know standards, comittees, compatibility, etc etc etc. i don't want to accuse someone. maybe myself for maybe not being as open minded as i shoud be.

anyways. i'll shut up. excuse my quite random interjection here (and using more pathos than necessary).

-- martin.