A dying era

[zee]

Hi,

I remember when i first went to school and got my copy of "oh Pascal" and
thought it was a great language. What seemed like a lifetime later. It was
then C closely followed by C++ as I didn't catch the start of the C
revolution from the beginning. I then started reading C/C++ user journal.

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we will
be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school anymore.
It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must come to an end.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

[James Juno]

This dog don't bark. Someone already fished this pool a few threads
back. OK, maybe you just gotta bite out of me but I ain't gonna snag
your hook. I'm gonna swim back downstream and warn the school not to
take your bait.

-JJ

zee wrote:

Hi,

I remember when i first went to school and got my copy of "oh Pascal" and
thought it was a great language. What seemed like a lifetime later. It was
then C closely followed by C++ as I didn't catch the start of the C
revolution from the beginning. I then started reading C/C++ user journal.

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we will
be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school anymore.
It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must come to an end.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

[zee]

seriously, you are not bummed about this? I am.

You think that c++ is going to hold on? This, pardon the expression (ain't
cobal)

"James Juno" <[e-mail] m> wrote in message
news:2Z******** ************@sc nresearch.com.. .

This dog don't bark. Someone already fished this pool a few threads back.
OK, maybe you just gotta bite out of me but I ain't gonna snag your hook.
I'm gonna swim back downstream and warn the school not to take your bait.

-JJ

zee wrote:

Hi,

I remember when i first went to school and got my copy of "oh Pascal" and
thought it was a great language. What seemed like a lifetime later. It
was then C closely followed by C++ as I didn't catch the start of the C
revolution from the beginning. I then started reading C/C++ user
journal.

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we
will be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school
anymore. It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must
come to an end.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

[Mike Wahler]

"zee" <sp**@nospam.co m> wrote in message
news:C6******** *************** *******@comcast .com...

"James Juno" <[e-mail] m> wrote in message
news:2Z******** ************@sc nresearch.com.. .

zee wrote:

Hi,

I remember when i first went to school and got my copy of "oh Pascal"
and thought it was a great language. What seemed like a lifetime later.
It was then C closely followed by C++ as I didn't catch the start of the
C revolution from the beginning. I then started reading C/C++ user
journal.

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we
will be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school
anymore. It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must
come to an end.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

This dog don't bark. Someone already fished this pool a few threads
back. OK, maybe you just gotta bite out of me but I ain't gonna snag your
hook. I'm gonna swim back downstream and warn the school not to take your
bait.

-JJ

seriously, you are not bummed about this? I am.
Yes, I'm disappointed that CUJ is being terminated (if it's
really true).
You think that c++ is going to hold on?
Yes I do. I see absolutely no reason why the demise of
one periodical will at all affect the future of C++.
This, pardon the expression (ain't cobal)

What on Earth is that supposed to mean? (Even if you'd
spelled COBOL correctly).

Also note that COBOL is still very much alive and well.

Finally, Please Do Not Top-Post. Thank you.

-Mike

[Pat]

I am not bummed out about this. C++ is a language that has all the power
plus some. C++ can easily access hardware, can create GUI's, and the
heart and soul of an OS as well as C. A journal reaching an end of an
era is not something that one should worry about because a journal runs
on economics and not on code. Economics is what's killing the journal
not the "death" of a language.
For .NET and JAVA, those languages are corporate created languages. .NET
needs the .NET platform and without the platform there is not one
language Microsoft can claim. JAVA, a good idea and that is it. The
virtual machine itself will eat large portions of memory, some call
those memory leaks, I call it JAVA's fate (IMO).
In conclusion, the last few issues of a journal does not show causation
for the "death" of C++ or C. It might show correlation but not
causation. And as for JAVA and .NET, they are just languages that are in
the mainstream, the MBA boss man heard the names on the news or in an
article and thinks that they are the only languages out there (remember
he/she has an MBA). In my opinion, tomorrow another language will arrive
like ruby and .NET'ers and JAVA'ers will be saying the same thing.
Hold your head high when people as what language you prefer when you say
C++.

zee wrote:

seriously, you are not bummed about this? I am.

You think that c++ is going to hold on? This, pardon the expression (ain't
cobal)

"James Juno" <[e-mail] m> wrote in message
news:2Z******** ************@sc nresearch.com.. .

This dog don't bark. Someone already fished this pool a few threads back.
OK, maybe you just gotta bite out of me but I ain't gonna snag your hook.
I'm gonna swim back downstream and warn the school not to take your bait.

-JJ

zee wrote:

Hi,

I remember when i first went to school and got my copy of "oh Pascal" and
thought it was a great language. What seemed like a lifetime later. It
was then C closely followed by C++ as I didn't catch the start of the C
revolution from the beginning. I then started reading C/C++ user
journal.

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we
will be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school
anymore. It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must
come to an end.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

[Marcin Kalicinski]

> It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we will

be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school
anymore.

I wonder in which language will you write your Java virtual machines then?
Sleep well, Java is sinking under its own weight, and .Net is another
Microsoft idea that will not live longer than ten years.

cheers,
Marcin

[P.J. Plauger]

"zee" <sp**@nospam.co m> wrote in message
news:mP******** *************** *******@comcast .com...

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we will
be left with .net and java. C++ is not even being taught in school
anymore. It's just sad, as the old saying goes. All good things must come
to an end.
True enough, but probably not for the reasons generally espoused.
What killed CUJ is what's been killing newspapers slowly for
the past half century, and what's killing off print magazines
more rapidly today -- a dying market. In the case of technical
magazines in particular, the internet is the single largest factor
of late. I used to buy Byte Magazine every month to get the latest
news on microcomputers. Now I get much of my news from newsgroups
like this one, with all the followup detail I can eat from
subsequent web searches. Byte also served as a reality check --
I'd never buy a hardware or software product until its ads
appeared for three consecutive months in Byte. These days I do
a Google search for specs, reviews, and best prices. And I am
hardly alone in this new modus operandi.

Magazines (and newspapers) live and die on their advertising
revenues. And they're like restaurants -- large fixed costs
and tremendous leverage on profits. Thus, a successful magazine
(or restaurant) can make a bundle, while a loser dies quickly.
It's those in the middle that hang on month to month, sometimes
making a profit, sometimes losing a bit. CMP owns a boatload of
magazines, so CUJ was more like a single restaurant in a chain.
The owners might let it lose money for a spell, in the hopes
that things will improve. Sooner or later, however, each
entity must justify its existence, or get shut down.

If you go back and look, you'll see that *all* magazines began
slimming down late in the Dot Boom, and have kept doing so
ever since. CUJ has been around 48 pages for years; and that's
about as close to life support as you can get. But it is also
hardly alone, and not the first to die.

I've said next to nothing about technical content, and that's
intentional. Those of us who generate it, or whip it into
shape, are primarily responsible for keeping the ads separated
by a bit of text. At least that's how it feels to me, as long
time writer and editor, when I discuss economics with the money
people. Some lucky mags, like Cosmopolitan, need diddly squat
for editorial content; people (mostly women and hairdressers)
buy it for the style message conveyed by the ads. Some
technical mags make no bones about soliciting free, or even
subsidized, copy from vendors. CUJ pointedly did *not* walk
that path. We tried, month in and month out for 25 years, to
provide articles of genuine technical merit. The quality did
vary, of course, as did the focus. But I have to say that it
kept a pretty high average. That was not what killed CUJ.

The last consideration I'll cover is the extent to which CUJ
is a canary in a coal mine. Does its demise presage the death
of C and/or C++? Not really. People read magazines mostly to
learn about *new* things. When the C Standard was being
developed in the 1980s, many of us in X3J11 were continually
pestered to give talks and write articles. Once ANSI C was
approved in 1989, there was a marked fall off in such
activity. CUJ shifted to more utilitarian articles about how
to use C, less of "here's what's coming next."

But at just that time, C++ stepped into the limelight. Several
magazines, and numerour conferences each year, discussed the
hothouse growth of Standard C++. That too began to fade as
the C++ Standard settled down. (There was also the Java boom,
speaking of strongly hyped languages, but I don't want to
drift too far off topic.) The C Users Journal became The C/C++
Users Journal and won another decade.

Today, both C and C++ are workhorse languages, with little
in the way of sexy new development. My local Barnes and Noble
devotes only two shelves to both languages, freely intermixed.
There are whole racks devoted to the latest fad languages and
tools. And that's because people buy books for the same reason
they go to talks and read magazines -- to learn about the new
stuff. For the established technology, look at support tools,
advanced textbooks, industrial training, job ads, etc. (Note
that I do *not* include introductory computer science texts.
Academic fads are only loosely coupled to real world needs.)
There you will find C and C++ consistently at the top of the
heap. And, aside from a five-year bump as the Java pig
passed through the python, it's been that way for the past
couple of decades.

So don't write off C and C++ as dead because CUJ withered and
died. PC magazine is the skinniest I've seen it since it was
born, yet there are about a billion PCs at work throughout
the world today, and new ones sold by the tens of millions
every year. The PC is much more of a workhorse, a commodity.
What's new and sexy in the PC world are its novel uses as
an appliance. And that calls for a different kind of coverage.
But you can't produce a monthly magazine consisting mostly of
wallpaper samples.
We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.
Amen, ave, and farewell.
We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

I'm probably deeper into the mist than most these days but,
to use the tag line from Monty Python and the Hole Grail,
I'm not dead yet. Neither is C or C++.

P.J. Plauger
Dinkumware, Ltd.
http://www.dinkumware.com

[Roberto Waltman]

"P.J. Plauger" <pj*@dinkumware .com> wrote:

"zee" <sp**@nospam.co m> wrote:

All theses years later and two days ago I get the last issue to be
published.

It's the end of an era I tell you. C and C++ are going to die and we will
be left with .net and java.

...
The last consideration I'll cover is the extent to which CUJ
is a canary in a coal mine. Does its demise presage the death
of C and/or C++? Not really.
...
Today, both C and C++ are workhorse languages, with little
in the way of sexy new development.
...
... For the established technology, look at support tools,
advanced textbooks, industrial training, job ads, etc.
... There you will find C and C++ consistently at the top of the
heap.
...
So don't write off C and C++ as dead because CUJ withered and
died.

We'll Cheers to you C/ C++ user journal.

Amen, ave, and farewell.

We will remember you as we all fade into the mist.

I'm probably deeper into the mist than most these days but,
to use the tag line from Monty Python and the Hole Grail,
I'm not dead yet. Neither is C or C++.

I would like to add that our perception of what
languages / technologies / methodologies etc.
are active, rising or dying depends a lot on our
current work environment.

There are many places were COBOL, FORTRAN, ADA,
Pick, Mumps, etc. "dominate" and will continue
to do so, because there isn't neither the need
nor the justification to switch to a newly
invented wheel that doesn't necessarily roll
under your vehicle any better than the ones
you already have.

In my (distorted) world, (embedded and industrial
control systems,) only C & C++ are viable options,
(*) not necessarily because of any intrinsic superiority
of these languages, but because of the combination
of their tool support, processor support, (C# or
Java for PowerPC, SH3, TI-F2812DSP, etc.?), existing
code base, experienced workforce, available libraries,
etc.

This would most likely not be the case if I was
developing web based database front ends, or
MS-Windows applications combining instant messaging
with role playing games and a vegetarian cookbook
all in one.

R.W.

(*) Yes I know that there are embedded versions of
practically any language under the Sun, but Java,
C#/.Net, Python, PHP, Perl, Pascal, Oberon, Modula,
Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, Ruby, Smalltalk, etc.
are known to exist, that's all.

Roberto Waltman

[ Please reply to the group,
return address is invalid ]

[Walter Bright]

"P.J. Plauger" <pj*@dinkumware .com> wrote in message
news:ue******** ************@gi ganews.com...

What killed CUJ is what's been killing newspapers slowly for
the past half century, and what's killing off print magazines
more rapidly today -- a dying market. In the case of technical
magazines in particular, the internet is the single largest factor
of late. I used to buy Byte Magazine every month to get the latest
news on microcomputers. Now I get much of my news from newsgroups
like this one, with all the followup detail I can eat from
subsequent web searches. Byte also served as a reality check --
I'd never buy a hardware or software product until its ads
appeared for three consecutive months in Byte. These days I do
a Google search for specs, reviews, and best prices. And I am
hardly alone in this new modus operandi.

An interesting corollary to that is I've found that print advertising
doesn't "pull" like it used to. This has got to make it difficult on
magazines as well.

[zee]

Ok.

What do people read to keep up to date on embedded C, C++ stuff ?