commoditize your complements, or something

Per strategy letter V ...

Why not create your apps with C++ & wxWindows?

Windows?  Yeah, we've got a windows version...
Mac?  Yeah, we've got a mac version...
Linux?  Yeah, we've got a linux version...

If it works for fogbugz, why not for citydesk?

Or for any generic desktop app?

Maybe it's because I've been using it for 10 years, but I find C++ to be highly productive, especially when coupled with a good framework library. 

Hermaphrodite
Thursday, January 29, 2004

Because everytime i try to explain C++
to programmers who aren't already
very good and come from a C'ish background,
i just have to give up.

son of parnas
Thursday, January 29, 2004

I've been saying this for a long time, but when all the smoke clears on these garbage collected, scripting languages, I will probably still be coding in C++.

There are still a huge class of applications where deterministic memory management is required.  Those are the applications I work on.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Thursday, January 29, 2004

There are too many ways to cause suble bugs in C++ even for experianced careful programmers. I think C# is going to turn out to be a very productive solution. Perhaps Java already is, but since we don't use it, and it doesn't seem to have much life on Windows, I couldn't say.

pdq
Thursday, January 29, 2004

What are the bugs in C++?

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Thursday, January 29, 2004

"What are the bugs in C++?"

He said that there are too many ways to cause bugs in C++ apps, not that C++ itself is buggy.

It always boils down to the right tool for the job. Years ago, I wrote an OCX that handled playing and mixing MPEG audio. C++ was absolutely the only way to go.

Today, I mainly develop corporate applications and intranet applications. I'd be crazy to try doing that with C++ when I have C#.

The right tool for the job. That's all.

Mark Hoffman
Thursday, January 29, 2004

Because Microsoft's market share of the desktop is so far past anyone else's.  If you write a desktop application you are not giving up much of the market by not offering Mac/Linux versions. If the market share broke down 50% MS / 25% Mac/ 25% Linux then following a muli-platform strategy would be important. I believe that FogBugz is a server based system. As the server market is very fragmented between Microsoft and several Unices following a multi-platform strategy is essential.

craig
Thursday, January 29, 2004

That also assume that Microsoft will always command the desktop.  Not a bad assumption to make, but you never know.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Thursday, January 29, 2004

One would assume that a company the size of Fog Creek could act nimbly once it was clear that desktop market share was shifting enough to make it worth the while to do cross-platform code.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Thursday, January 29, 2004

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