Badly taught, over-used… better than ever
C++ 11 is “far better than previous versions”, says the inventor of the language Bjarne Stroustrup. He was speaking at an online event marking the launch of Embarcadero’s C++ Builder XE3, a rapid application tool targeting Windows and Mac OS X.
C++ Builder XE3 is a promising but curious product. Delphi and C++ Builder were successful because the tools offered fast native code performance and high productivity on Windows. Embarcadero is now striving to make them cross-platform tools, via a new framework called FireMonkey that supports Windows and OS X, with iOS and Android promised in 2013. To keep pace with C++ changes, Embarcadero has adopted a new 64-bit compiler front-end for XE3, based on the open source compiler front end Clang.
C++ is an ISO standard, first ratified in 1998 with C++ 11 completed in 2011, but Stroustrup revealed he was initially resistant to standardisation efforts.
“It took some arm-twisting to get me to realise that it was time to start a standards effort,” he said. “People pointed out that you couldn’t have a language used by millions controlled by a single gu
