Why do Java/C# edge out C++ as the recommended language to learn OOP on SO?

Question

I noticed after reading the answers/discussion to this question (What is the best language to learn OOP on?) - that more and more people are recommending C# or Java over C++ to learn OOP on. A simple term search on that answer page results in 10 hits for C++, 21 for C# and 27 for Java.

Now, I understand that these 2 languages fix a lot of quirks and issues with C++, and looked up these resources that relate mostly to performance, JVM vs native implementation, systems focus vs applications, manual memory management vs automated et al.

My question is - are there any fundamental differences in the OO capabilities of Java/C# vs C++? Or are the former recommended purely due to their generic ease of use/improvements over the latter?

Thanks.

PS, I'm aware of Java interface inheritance vs C++ multiple inheritance as a difference. I would consider that an implementational one rather than functional.

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Wow, I wasn't expecting these many answers! Thanks a lot. I'll update with a summary here of what I learned.

Answer 1

C# and Java are preferred for ease of use.

Are there fundamental differences? No. you get all the OO basics.

There are some differences, as you know, but not enough to consider Java or C# as "inferior" OO languages.

Answer 2

People recommend these languages for learning because C++ is more "do-it-yourself-y", a trait that tends to make beginners uncomfortable. Java and C# manage a lot of things for the programmer while still providing reasonable language facilities for their specific problem domains. When a person is comfortable with programming concepts, language is practically immaterial except perhaps to more clearly solve a specific problem. Hence it makes a lot more sense for beginners to learn languages that they can easily understand and from which they can build their knowledge.

Answer 3

Because they are safe languages and you don't have to worry about overflowing buffers, leaking memory, causing undefined behavior, etc. That way you can focus on learning OOP and not have to worry about shooting yourself in the foot.

Answer 4

C++ doesn't force you to program in an OOP style while Java much more does so. If you want to learn to program in an object oriented way it helps if the language is pushing you in that direction.

Answer 5

One of the major advantages of C# and Java over C++ when using it for learning OOP is that the learner does not have to worry about garbage collection issues yet, as garbage collection is automatic and implicit in both C# and Java.

Answer 6

One of the big things that you get with Java or C# over C++ is a large standard framework.

Want to do networking - it's in the framework, In C++, you'll need to roll your own or learn, install and integrate some other framework that isn't necessarily what others might be using.

Same for any number of other sets of functionality.

Of course C++ has Boost, but that's generally much, much lower-level than you you get baked into the Java or .Net frameworks.

Answer 7

Java is higher-level language compared to C++. It abstract you much more from the machine and this is great for learning purpose. You do NOT want students to deal with pointer problems, overflow, garbage collections, etc while learning OOP concepts, since they are orthogonal issue to OOP and will distract the student's attention away from the core concept of OOP itself.

I don't have experience using C#, so I can't talk much about it.

Answer 8

I can only speak for myself, but for learning OOP, I'd recommend C# or Java over C++ because C++ isn't an OOP language.

C++ allows you to mix a lot of styles, including a few OOP bits and pieces. But any sane C++ code I've seen is not predominantly OOP.

C# and Java are all about OOP. If your code doesn't follow the rules of OOP, you're doing it wrong.

Another reason is almost as obvious:
C++ is a pain to learn. It's very subtle and tricky to get right. And if you mess up, you most likely won't get a nice compiler error or exception thrown at runtime. Most likely, your program will just jump off the rails and do weird unpredictable things. Maybe crash, maybe seem to work, maybe just seem to do the wrong thing. Or often, seem to work, and then crash somewhere entirely different 5 minutes later.

C# and Java pretty much eliminate undefined behavior. If you do something that's not allowed by the language, the error is caught one way or the other. That simplifies things a lot, especially for a beginner.

Answer 9

You're ignoring the elephant in the room.

The #1 answer (and #4, and #7, and #9, and ...) on the question you linked to says Java/C# for work, but Smalltalk/Self for really learning OOP, and all of its comments seemed to agree with the Smalltalk recommendation.

From this perspective, the answer is simple: C# and Java are a lot closer to Smalltalk than C++ is.

Answer 10

are there any fundamental differences in the OO capabilities of Java/C# vs C++?

Yes. Generics, Properties, Events, and so on. You mentioned MI yourself.

C# is probably the better language to learn it in, as properties gives a much more clear understanding of what ensapsulation is all about, and is far less confusing than methods for the same.

The question is possible how you define OOP. One could argue that events are related (think observer pattern), and thus the easy handling of events in Java and C# (specially C#) is a difference.

And then C++ just sucks when it comes to OOP. I mean, header files? Please, this is 2010, they should be compiler generated already!

Edit: Also that Java and C# uses Exceptions for everything is a big plus. C++'s exception model isn't that great.

Answer 11

Java/C# are almost pure OO languages. This means that they are largely designed to implement programs using OO methodology exclusively.

C++ is a multi-paradigm language, and has no preferred methodology. It is possible to implement OO using C++, but there are considerable deployment issues with this. This is because there is no C++ VM. The VM is pretty much what makes OO practical, since it can cope with assemblies, run time introspection, etc. that are required to deploy OO modules. There have been attempts to wrap C++ up like this (COM,CORBA,SOM) but these didnt work so well.

However, for academic purposes I think the virtual inheritance mechanism is how OO should be taught. C++ is one of the few languages that allows coopertive multiple inheritance. And also the only one that implements exceptions correctly, i.e. in conjunction with the destructor.

So if you want to only implement OO then stick with Java/C#. If you want to implement OO and mix in expression templates, DESLs, policy based design, kernel hacks, assembler, and interface directly with FORTRAN binaries via shared memory, then choose C++.

Answer 12

You started off asking "Why are C# and Java recommended more?" That was a really good question, with some potentially unexpected answers.

But then you asked, in essence, "What makes C# and Java better?" Which more than anything shows you should have waited to hear some answers to the first.

Ok, one possible reason for the predominance of recommendations of C# and Java is that they actually are best at OOP. Better than C++. Better than Haskell. Better than Smalltalk. This is likely NOT the correct reason.

A much more likely reason is that people recommend what they know. This suggests that a better follow-on question is: "Why do more people do object-oriented programming in C# and Java than in C++?" Now that's a good question that I can only provide a few of the answers to.

The biggest answer is "Because that's what most universities teach." But that begs the question. "Why do the universities teach C# and Java?" Two big factors.

The professors prefer Java and C# because the theoretical basis is much, much simpler than C++. The languages themselves have a lot more interesting theoretical properties which make proofs easier. The typing systems are much much simpler, which leaves room for expansion, for hey if we add these markers to the Java type system (e.g. taint indicators on user-supplied data) we can write a little proof of concept pre-compiler and publish some academic papers on our new Java flavor. With C++ the make your own flavor isn't so attractive. Partly because C++ is already so flexible, and partly because the prototype parser/type color thingamajig is now REALLY hard because it has to handle C++ syntax.

Universities also like Java and C# because they attract students. Students go for what looks best on their resume. What works best on the resume depends on the advertising propaganda the headhunters swallow from famous companies like -- you guessed it -- Sun and Microsoft and Novell.

Then, Java and C# are much easier to master than C++. Not necessarily easier to get any particular job done, although the standard libraries, garbage collection, and code refactoring tools (back to C++ parsing difficulties) certainly do help. But C++ has so much more capability than Java or C# that the number of true masters is much less, both in absolute numbers and percentagewise.

And, C++ masters are less likely to either program O-O or simply suggest their language for learning OOP, since they have so many paradigms to work with. They'll instead ask "Why are you learning OOP when generic programming is so much more powerful?"

So there, you have half a dozen counter-cultural reasons for the popularity of C# and Java as an answer to the question "What language is best to learn OOP?" that can't be summarized as "they're better, that's all".

Answer 13

You can't do pointer manipulation in Java or C#.

Using C++ to understand OOP will require a lot more effort than doing so in Java or C# because the C++ class system is more complex, the language allows for full 'low level' access down to assembly level, the industry standards rely on libraries and conventions that take a lot of exposure to fully understand and the language wasn't designed to be easy for beginners in the first place.

10, 15 years ago there were no other (out-of-the-box) OOP capable languages with strong industry support, so C++ was pretty much the default choice for teaching OOP. These days we have Java on the JVM and C# on dotNet and while purists will tell you that "they're not really OO languages", they are good enough, have strong support and significantly lower the entry barrier to understanding and working with OOP concepts.

Answer 14

While I think almost every possible reason for learning OOP with C# or Java has been covered here (pro and con):

I also think a major reason (and this relates to Ben Voigt's comment on his belief that Java and C# are the languages being taught in computer science classes) is sheer "size and momentum": knowing you have resources like StackOverFlow and CodeProject, and a critical mass of programmers some of whom will always be "pushing the envelope" on explaining how to use the latest "goodies" in the language ... makes a great deal of difference.

... as an example of "envelope pushers": I'm thinking of the WPF Disciples, for example, and the "great FrameWork/DI/IOC" softwares and the debates surrounding them which have become as mysterious to me as English Cricket ...

Note: I would like to see statistics on the extent to which C# or Java is used in intoductory college courses in the US and Europe: I think that could be very interesting. I would interpret Ben's comment as a very highly probable hypothesis, but still a hypothesis.

It's interesting that no one here has proposed Objective C as found on the Mac for learning OOP (speaking as a fully de-programmed former member of the "Cult of Mac").

I would also observe that a lot of the time when people are speaking of "OOP" they are speaking: not of O-O design; and, not of "design patterns," but speaking of programming with built in system objects ranging from utility libraries to GUI-thingies, and often speaking about the quirks and anomalies of getting them to work under particular conditions in particular environments.

Anyone who's sweated with the standard WinForms controls (ListView, TreeView, ComboBox, etc.) for a few yearas has, imho, "learned" a lot about inconsistency in object design: from the "glass is half-full perspective," however, maybe that's what ENABLES the third party software companies to thrive and innovate ? It has certainly motivated me to buy a 3rd. party set of tools that have much more "design consistency and integrity."

In summary : I'd say the best resources for learning OOP are a selected few language-dependent books (like, for C#, Skeet's masterpiece, "C# in Depth"). What book would you recommend for Java-OOP ? Hopefully, at best, using your key book(s) in the context of a course or mentoring. And, then StackOverFlow and CodeProject come into play as fantastic resources to help you in your own continuing self-education.

A comment: in the study of music you have the concept of "etudes" which not only help you (and force you) to master new technques and musical concepts, but also are immediately useful (in the aesthetic sense in music: i.e., pleasing to the ear).

imho the "great book" on C# "Design Patterns," using the idea of a set of graduated progresive exercises, as in musical etudes, and taking full advantage of language evolution in FrameWorks 3-4, is waiting to be written ... by Jon Skeet, or Eric Lippert, but I'd be just as happy to have one from Jesse Liberty or Matthew McDonald, or Richter, or Troelsen, or Sells.

Would it be valuable to distinguish here two types of "educational goals" : turning out competent application programmers whose area of expertise is platform specific (i.e., Mac, PC, Linux): and turning out "computer scientists" who are able to analyze problems using a number of methods of abstractions, who are focused on algorithms, and, perhaps secondarily, on the choice of which full-Turing equivalent language they feel best fits the implementation need of a particular algorithm ?

Or is there another "role" here of "application model architect" who dreams in UML, and operates on a level of abstraction far beyond "mere coding" :) ?

Meanwhile, fossils, like this writer, will continue to mess around with what they refer as "dinosaur dentistry" using the equivalent of duct tape and crazy-glue to make archaic levels of legacy software (often from competng vendors) work together, kind of.