At the ACCU conference recently, one wag in the audience referred to Microsoft’s C++/CLI as “C++ divided by CLIâ€, which neatly summed up the prevailing mood. The 10,000 classes in .NET can’t work with ISO C++, and you may ask why anyone in their right mind would try to bring out a platform in this day and age that couldn’t talk directly to C++.
Why Does this Matter?
If your life is like so many others, churning out code to work on Microsoft platforms, this doesn’t matter. Because Microsoft eats its own dogfood with VC++, using it to develop its own products, and has real C++ people like Herb, this stuff works well, with VC++ producing excellent code and conforming well to standards. But it can be confusing, as Java-style garbage collection breaks many common C++ idioms for tight resource handling, not just memory. But if your boss gives you a lump of C++/CLI code to port, thinking it’s C++, you and s/he are going to have very different views on how long it will take; not that Microsoft is going to cry too much over this.
