I am very good at computer programming but very average at maths... can I be a quant?

[alain]

I'm so in love with this language !

Sorry to hear that.

 

[MRoss]

Ha Alain!

Actually, I agree with didje!

From my five years of undergrad study my favorite course was intro to C++. I find it interest and fun. I even fool around sometimes when I'm relaxing

 

[alain]

Ha Alain!

Actually, I agree with didje!

From my five years of undergrad study my favorite course was intro to C++. I find it interest and fun. I even fool around sometimes when I'm relaxing

did you take any other programming course? Did you try to learn another language?

 

[MRoss]

Come to think of it you are right! I completely forgot about APL. I might have enjoyed that even more than C++ . I found a very cool way to price options (binomial tree) without loops. My professor loved it.

 

[didje]

Sorry to hear that.

I know. A lot of people do I just love the concept of being totally responsible of what you do in your code. OOP languages like JAVA are good if you want to make web applications. But when it comes to performance and speed, nothing can compare to C++ !

 

[AWilliams]

I know. A lot of people do I just love the concept of being totally responsible of what you do in your code. OOP languages like JAVA are good if you want to make web applications. But when it comes to performance and speed, nothing can compare to C++ !

Not to be too pedantic but there aren't to many performance critical applications where you absolutely need C/C++; applications where every bit of code has to be optimized. There's no reason you cannot write, for example, Microsoft Word in Java or .NET. In some applications, .NET can even outperform C++.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Not to be too pedantic but there aren't to many performance critical applications where you absolutely need C/C++; applications where every bit of code has to be optimized. There's no reason you cannot write, for example, Microsoft Word in Java or .NET. In some applications, .NET can even outperform C++.

I think didje is saying that you *can* do almost anything in C++ that you want; with other languages (e.g. C#) you eventually hit a barrier. That's just the way it is. I agree.

I am not just referring to performance. It is a side issue. It's the level of malleability that didje (and myself) are mentioniong, I think.

I work with C# quite a bit as well as C++.

Some time ago they ported WordPerfect to Java. It was a disaster. Many critical systems are written in C

 

[alain]

It's the level of malleability that didje (and myself) are mentioniong, I think.

This sounds great on paper but in real life it is huge issue because you are bound to make mistakes and C++ doesn't forgive when there is problem.

Some time ago they ported WordPerfect to Java. It was a disaster. Many critical systems are written in C

There have been countless of projects started in C++ that have been problematic to no end. One quick example, when Windows NT was being developed, the GUI team wanted to use C++. It was a major disaster. IIRC, Dave Cutler had to switch the whole thing back to C. The whole story is told in this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Showstopper-Breakneck-Windows-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0759285780/

 

[Daniel Duffy]

C++ is not for everyone, at some stage if developer makes too many errors, then move. C++ is a hard taskmaster. You just have to know what you are doing but that is a question of training.

It was silly to try and write GUIs in C++ in the first place, especially if you go haywire with OOP. Problem was not C++ but how the developers (incorrectly) applied it.

I was there in OO land from 1989 and saw the whole story unfold. Too much inheritance. I made my own device-independent GUI once based on SDK and not so much inheritance.
http://www.datasim.nl/Education/Articles/DP/WhitePaper5.html (1996)

Cutler's NT was a pale shadow of Cutler's VAX/VMS (great OS). A big disappointment I must say.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Follow-on remark on GUI. The langauge used is not the problem, it is sooner:

. Deep inheritance hierarchy (AWT, MFC)
. Using very bad design pattersn (aka Observer)

Java AWT had a weak event model; is Swing better?

C# uses delegates (composition), QT uses signals. Less overhead.

 

[alain]

Java AWT had a weak event mode; is Swing better?

I like Java a lot but I have never done GUI development with it. I think it was a half baked idea.

 

[Ohad]

they call this math envy

A physics professor of mine once said "to be a good physicist you have to be a good mathematician , but it doesn't work the other way around"

I wonder how the scholars of the old days ( Newton,Gauss etc ) defined themselves , they used to do everything and were amazing on all fields....?!

 

[Tsotne]

It was silly to try and write GUIs in C++ in the first place, especially if you go haywire with OOP. Problem was not C++ but how the developers (incorrectly) applied it.

Isn't it still hard and a bit senseless to build GUI apps in C++? If the application requires too much GUI mechanisms then the opportunity cost - "performance"--- should be of second concern.