{"id":198,"date":"2005-04-28T14:35:26","date_gmt":"2005-04-28T21:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp\/?p=198"},"modified":"2005-04-28T14:35:26","modified_gmt":"2005-04-28T21:35:26","slug":"on-language-complexity-and-bloglines-hiring-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/on-language-complexity-and-bloglines-hiring-c\/","title":{"rendered":"On Language Complexity and Bloglines Hiring C++"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P><A href=\"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/sogrady\/\">Stephen<\/A> has generated a little snowball of&nbsp;a conversation about the role of C++.<\/P><P>First came this <A href=\"http:\/\/news.com.com\/C%20creator%20upbeat%20on%20its%20future\/2100-1007_3-5681078.html?tag=nefd.ac\">news story<\/A>, written by Ingrid&nbsp;Marsen, in which <A href=\"http:\/\/www.research.att.com\/~bs\/homepage.html\">Bjarne Stroustrup<\/A> (most inventors of successful programming languages have <A href=\"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/archives\/000320.html\">beards<\/A>, but where did the pics go Tamir?)&nbsp;claims that its a misperception that C++ is being overtaken by newer languages such as Java and C#.<\/P><BLOCKQUOTE>  <P>&#8220;C++ is bigger than ever,&#8221; Stroustrup said. &#8220;There are more than 3 million   C++ programmers. Everywhere I look there has been an uprising&#8211;more and more   projects are using C++. A lot of teaching was going to Java, but more are   teaching C++ again. There has been a backlash.&#8221;<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE><P>Tecosystems digs into the question with this <A href=\"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/sogrady\/archives\/000637.html\">post<\/A>. It is worth reading the comments from folks like:<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sun.com\/bmc\">Bryan Cantrill<\/A>: &#8220;<!--StartFragment -->If the problem is performance-sensitive, it will be towards C and C++. If not, it will be towards dynamic languages like Python, Ruby, etc. FWIW, I see very little Python and Ruby deployed in production (and I pretty much always ask the question) &#8212; and it&#8217;s hard to even find a customer that intends to deploy Python or Ruby into production.&#8221;<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/www.baus.net\/\">Christopher Baus<\/A>:&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> &#8220;I can&#8217;t say there is a deep disconnect with in the C++ community, but I feel that I am starting to disconnect with it personally. There are so many different programming styles going on in the language right now that it is literally becoming impossible to walk into a project as a &#8220;C++&#8221; developer and be guaranteed to understand what is going on.&#8221; How about <A href=\"http:\/\/www.baus.net\/language-complexity\">Python with c extensions<\/A>?<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/www.dehora.net\/journal\/\">Bill de Hora<\/A>:&nbsp;&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> &#8220;Now, if we look at Bittorrent, or XMPP, or Jini, or JXTA, or even raw Erlang, as a middleware alternative. You can start seeing non-client-server distribution options where in extreme cases, the system will go faster as more clients come on board. Language\/runtime scaling doesn&#8217;t seem to matter so much there.&#8221;<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/www.lapthorn.net\/\">Barry Lapthorn<\/A>: &#8220;<!--StartFragment -->The whole industry is just under going a &#8216;settling&#8217; period where people are &#8216;choosing&#8217;: (1) &#8216;Back end&#8217; &#8211; C\/C++, (2) &#8216;Front end&#8217; &#8211; the &#8216;VB&#8217; languages (VB, C#, Java &#8211; yeah, yeah, Java on the backend&#8230;), (3) &#8216;glue&#8217; &#8211; the scripting languages (Ruby, perl, python, etc. ). Barry also points to this <A href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/developmenttopics\/development\/story\/0,10801,100542,00.html?source=x10\">computerworld story<\/A> which has some numbers on language useage.<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/naeblis.cx\/rtomayko\/\">Ryan Tomayko<\/A> is succinct as ever: &#8220;<!--StartFragment -->Python\/Ruby and C are a great combination that provides both convenience and efficiency when you need it. C++ is really very fringe for me at this point when going into new projects but I guess I won&#8217;t rule it out completely.&#8221; How do I know Ryan is a genius? He can <A href=\"http:\/\/naeblis.cx\/rtomayko\/2004\/12\/12\/rest-to-my-wife\">explain REST to his wife<\/A>&#8230; its a brilliant primer on HTTP and REST folks&#8230;<\/P><P>Now you&#8217;re probably wondering what Bloglines has to do with this discussion, and why I am posting anyway. It&#8217;s all about rss serendipity. Just after reading the comments, for some reason i decided to click on a link in my aggregator-<A href=\"http:\/\/www.askjeevescareers.com\/askjeeves\/jobboard\/SearchPositions.asp?ShowJobID=465\">Bloglines is hiring<\/A>&#8230;What kind of people is the rather excellent service looking for?<\/P><P>This kind: <FONT><BR><BR><B>SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, BLOGLINES<\/B><BR><BR><B>Summary Description:<\/B><BR>Ask Jeeves, Inc. is seeking qualified candidates for the position of Sr. Software Engineer to work at our Los Gatos location. The Software Engineer will develop and implement a large scale data processing system in a distributed environment, in <STRONG>C++.<\/STRONG> The development tasks involve all aspects of scaling and improving a high-volume end-user focused web service.<BR><BR><B>Responsibilities:<\/B><BR><\/P><UL>  <LI>Addressing scaling issues arising from storing large amounts of data and   serving a lot of web pages<BR><\/LI>  <LI>Maintain and improve RSS crawling and parsing processes<BR><\/LI>  <LI>Implement new functionality<BR><\/LI>  <LI>Develop tools and utilities to track progress and provide statistics<\/LI><\/UL><P><BR><BR><\/FONT><\/TD><\/TR><TR><TD align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\"><FONT>Job Requirements<\/FONT> <\/TD><\/TR><TR><TD align=\"left\" colspan=\"2\"><FONT><B>Technical Skill Level:<\/B><BR><\/FONT><\/P><UL>  <LI><FONT>Bachelors&#146;s degree in Computer Science,   Computer engineering, related fields or equivalent field experience.   <\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Very strong C and C++ understanding and   development abilities<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Very strong UNIX abilities, including   multithreaded\/multiprocess development skills<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Good understanding of web protocols such as   HTTP and HTTPS<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Good understanding of performance issues in a   UNIX system and distributed environment<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Familiarity with web templating   systems<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Familiarity with RSS and blogs<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Familiarity with scripting languages such as   Python, Perl, or Bash<BR><\/FONT><\/LI>  <LI><FONT>Familiarity with databases such as Sleepycat,   GDBM, or MySQL<\/FONT><\/LI><\/UL><\/TD><\/TR><P>Quick and Dirty Takeway? Bloglines sees C++ as performance glue, the essential foundation for a highly scalable service. Everything else is about interaction models &#8211; which is why all that&#8217;s called for is &#8220;familiarity&#8221; rather than depth.<\/P><P><A href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/\">Flickr<\/A>, awesome though it is,&nbsp;has had plenty of scaling issues and <A href=\"http:\/\/blog.flickr.com\/flickrblog\/2004\/11\/flickr_is_sorry.html\">performance problems<\/A>&nbsp;recently. Note it evidently <A href=\"http:\/\/ludicorp.com\/job_display.php?id=2\">isn&#8217;t looking for C++ experience<\/A>. <\/P><P>Quick and Dirty and fully blog clustered &#8211; is that blustered?<\/P><P>&nbsp;<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stephen has generated a little snowball of&nbsp;a conversation about the role of C++.First came this news story, written by Ingrid&nbsp;Marsen, in which Bjarne Stroustrup (most inventors of successful programming languages have beards, but where did the pics go Tamir?)&nbsp;claims that its a misperception that C++ is being overtaken by newer languages such as Java and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wfjh-3c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}