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by zerostar07 5287 days ago
Then again, browsers are written in C++ and so are almost all GUI apps. We spend most of our time with software that is developed in C++, probably for a good reason
1 comments

so are almost all GUI apps

This claim is clearly false on Mac OS X and X Window platforms, and disputable on Windows, with the increasing share of .NET apps.

Please, name a .NET app that is widely used on Windows.
No it's not - there's a reason Qt is one of the most mature and well used GUI toolkits in the world by professional desktop software...
How is wide usage of Qt relevant to the claim that almost all GUI apps are written in C++?
"""This claim is clearly false on Mac OS X and X Window platforms, and disputable on Windows, with the increasing share of .NET apps."""

Actually it is not.

On OS X tons of programs, and especially the very largest, most popular ones, are in C++ (think: Photoshop and the Creative Suite, MS Office, and lots of Apple's own: Safari (webkit) is C++, Final Cut and Logic are C++, etc. Don't confuse the front-end UI code (Cocoa) with the backend. C++ is a first class language in XCode, and you can mix it with Obj-C as Objective-C++.

On X Window platforms: besides KDE, some of the most important apps are C++, including Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office.

On Windows there are almost no .NET apps that people actually use --people as end users, as opposed to corporations. Most of the popular stuff, from games, to office suites, to design suites, to browsers, etc are C++.

You just proved the claim that there are many GUI apps written in C++ on OS X and X Window platforms, which is, incidentally, not the claim I find false. What I find false is the claim that almost all GUI apps are written in C++.
Can you find one app on your computer that is not written in c++?
Why, of course. What's more interesting, I can find only one GUI app on my computer that is (probably) written in C++, the web browser I use.

Why do you ask?

His argument is that if he's using a Mac, a lot of them are written in Objective-C.

And if he's using Gnome in Linux, most are written in C.

But for Windows apps, commercial apps, cross platform and games, C++ leads by far.