Will .NET take over C/C++ any time?

Question

This is a subjective question.

I worked in Visual Basic 6.0 before coming into the .NET space.

One thing I see that there are a lot of things, for which there is a need to deal with the Win32 API. As a Visual Basic 6.0 developer, there were a lot of limitations. .NET fixes some of the old problems however the need to rely on Win32 has not been taken care of.

Will there be anytime that there wouldn't be the need to rely on Win32? (I guess only when .NET has support at OS level.)

I understand that domain of .NET (writing LOB applications/websites) and C/C++ is different so far.

Can .NET or any other infrastructure really make C/C++ less significant? Am I expecting too much?

EDIT: Doesn't it look like, building wrapper over another wrapper (and bring in new set of complexities along-with it)?

Answer 1

Not any time soon. They aren't going to re-write the kernel and the core APIs in .NET in the near future, if ever. People have been expecting C to go away for a very long time, I just don't see it happening.

Answer 2

It can't go away any time soon, but in Windows, at least, new projects are going less and less with C/C++. You can even see examples of Microsoft starting to eat their own dog food.

A great example of this is the C# compiler. Currently, it is written in C/C++. The C# team is currently working on re-writing it purely in managed code. A big reason for this has to do with CAS policies in .NET. Invoking unmanaged code requires FullTrust, so compiling code also requires FullTrust. As they move over to managed code, this limitation goes away.

As more and more developers go to .NET as their development platform, we are seeing Microsoft follow suit.

Another great example is Visual Studio 2010. They are re-writing large portions of the IDE using WPF and MEF so that it is easily extensible.

Next, look at the Silverlight runtime. It doesn't rely (specifically) on Win32 at all. It runs on a Mac just as well as it runs on Windows. As Silverlight becomes more capable, we may find many of the .NET calls that currently rely on Win32 no longer do so.

I guess my point is that we ARE starting to see some changes in the Windows world at least.

Of course, as soon as you need to be more cross-platform, C/C++ becomes more appealing again...

Answer 3

There are a few situations in which C#/.NET will never be able to replace C/C++:

1. The target computer has no .NET runtime environment, and you can't/don't want to force the install. (This would also be a problem with Java or Parrot/Perl6 ). This can also be a problem if the target has an older version of the .NET environment than your program.

2. The code needs to run on Windows and Linux or OSX. C/C++ are more portable than C#, even despite Mono.

Answer 4

Well, first of all, MS is working on an OS based on managed code (.NET) (Singularity). Now, this is just a research project, so there's no guarantee that anything will come of it, but it does show where MS is thinking.

Next, we have to consider, are we taking about the Windows world, or computer applications in general. C# isn't making big inroads into the Linux/Unix world, so C/C++ will remain strong there.

If we limit ourselves to just Windows, then I think, for new desktop applications, .NET has probably already passed C/C++ (C++ still has the edge overall due to the existing code base). However, for Web development, C/C++ was never very big to start with, so .NET passed them a long time ago.

Answer 5

As you said, C/C++ and C# cover different areas of development. The reason C# is replacing some C++ applications is mostly that C++ should have never been used in the first place for them (business data centric applications). All web browsers are written with C++, same goes for office systems, games, image processing, etc.

Answer 6

C# has lots of good features. However, the biggest difference I know of between C# and C/C++ is that somebody decided the preprocessor was no longer needed.

For simple uses of the preprocessor, no doubt they were right.

However, many highly skilled/experienced programmers make use of code generation to significantly reduce programming effort, and improve software performance. For some problems, a preprocessor is a highly effective code generator. Leaving it out means those programmers have to find other, less convenient, ways to do code generation.

Answer 7

.NET runs mostly on Windows (with Mono on Linux and I think Mac). But C/C++ are still used in other places like embedded devices. Many compilers for other languages are themselves implemented in C/C++.

Answer 8

Seeing that almost all higher level languages are themselves written in C, I don't see this happening any time soon.

Answer 9

This is similar to what a professor of mine said in the early 1980s - Pascal should be used for everything. I don't think so. Different languages have different purposes. The problem is that people tend to only see things in their domain. I work in modeling and simulation and sometimes work close to the metal. C++ is the language for me. I want it unmanaged and without GC. I don't work in the business/database world, so all the C#/Java/Beans/J2EE TLAs don't bring anything to the table for me.

Answer 10

.NET has taken over C/C++ in the domain for which it was designed. Not many people are writing device drivers or other system level things in .NET. But it excels at business applications, which constitute probably the majority of the programming that is done.

Even C/C++ hasn't eliminated the need for people to write assembly in certain cases, so it's unlikely that .NET will ever eliminate it. But it was not meant to.

Answer 11

I don't think that is going to happen either. This might happen on the windows platform (or not) but on the linux/unix platform I don't see that happening.

Answer 12

Considering that the newer languages are themselves written using C / C++ , it would be a long time before C / C++ is phased out (if ever)

Answer 13

C# (or, more exactly, .NET Framework) wasn't meant to take over C/C++. What it WAS meant to take over is Java. But Java is truly multiplatform. Not "all right, all right, in our infinite mercy we'll allow Mono to exist, for now, but don't get too uppity" multiplatform like .NET.

Answer 14

If you mean "take over" in the sense of replace for all tasks, no.

If you mean "take over" in the sense of become more popular, it may have already happened.

To me, C/C++ is old in the same way that assembly language is old. I haven't written any C on the PC for maybe 6 years. The only time I write C now is for limited machines such as the iPhone. To me, the interpreted languages already seem to have passed up the compiled languages (at least in jobs available). But C won't go away in the same way that assembly won't go away. Just fewer people writing it.