Steve Teixeira explains the strategy for Microsoft C++ products and gets dinged in comments with requests to "make VC 8 be a genuine first-class language instead of a second-class one that is useful only as communications tool to a first-class language (C# or VB)." He later responds, "On the VC++ team, we’re more interested in enabling development scenarios that are important to our customers than trying to meet some arbitrary bar for being a ‘first class’ .NET language."
Of course many people say precisely the same things about Delphi for .NET, and the answer is just the same. I couldn’t agree more with Steve’s reply. In my opinion many people use the phrase "first class .NET language" to mean "looks and feels exactly like C#." Folks, C# exists, and it’s a fine language, so if you want to use something which behaves exactly like C# why not just use it? C++/CLI and Delphi for .NET aren’t supposed to act precisely like C# in every way because they’re different languages.
Update: Marco Cantù has some comments on this post which are worth reading.
{ 3 } Comments
I always like how companies dismiss what customers are asking for by claiming it isn’t what customers are asking for.
It doesn’t sound any better coming from MS than it does from Borland. Fortunately for MS, it is too large to seriously suffer the customer backlash that Borland has felt.
At least, for now.
When a customer asks for C#, I don’t think it’s "dismissing what they want" by giving them C#.
But maybe it’s just me.
Xepol: I try to address the issue you raise here: http://blogs.msdn.com/texblog/archive/2006/10/16/do-what-i-want-not-what-i-ask.aspx
-steve
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