About ten years ago I started my first full time programming job. I was working on some business software written in C/C++. I say C/C++ instead of just C++ because it was written mostly in C with classes – with perhaps a few cases of inheritance or actually even only few classes – it used structs in many places to group some methods together the same way you would use classes today. The code was fairly complicated and it was just aging. The standard C libraries it used were not very rich, so if you wanted to code up something fairly straightforward – you had to dig through a lot of documentation looking for something basic only to end up implementing that list class yourself. We were using a Watcom compiler at that time and trying out Borland C++ Builder for some side projects showed it was a great improvement in that VCL provided a lot of great wrapper classes for Windows APIs making things easier. Two years later we were looking into rewriting our application or at least starting a new version and considering which tools to use – basically trying to choose between Borland C++ and C#. I was on the C++ side – it was a fairly known language, more predictable and providing intuitively higher performance, while C# was at version 1.1 and had lots of great libraries, but a bit foreign and why would anyone want to go away from the fun of using pointers, managing object lifetimes and relying on some garbage (collector)? Well, I lost – Microsoft seemed to be focusing on supporting C# and in the end it turned out to be a lot more productive than C++.
Fast forward 8 years and Microsoft says – in Windows 8 you can code using C#/VB, JavaScript or C++. Well, the word on the street is that it is so that programmers fluent in any of these languages will be able to code applications for Windows, so I guess I will stick with C#. Maybe I will look at HTML5, JS and CSS, since these seem to be getting most traction, I thought. Now, having found some limitations in the .NET/WinRT stack I have a feeling like the C++/DirectX route is the most attractive. The .NET stack might make you more productive than the JS or C++ – especially if you have been coding in C# for the last eight years and perhaps HTML5 has better graphics performance or some other interesting features, but it feels like learning C++/DirectX on top of C#/WinRT is what would allow me to cover most scenarios for writing Metro Style Apps™, so especially with some experience working on the test team for the DirectX wrappers in the Windows API Code Pack – I am hoping to have an easier start in diversifying my skills.
C++ (Re)Learning Resources
Right now I have two resources I am using to relearn C++:
- The Pluralsight C++ trainings by Kate Gregory – it is 10 hours of videos which is a bit painful, especially that the 7 hours of the beginner part is mosly familiar stuff targeted at the very beginners indeed, so that makes me a bit sleepy after a weekend day with the kids, but it is very high quality and I like to get solid basics before I start working with a technology, so I will make it through somehow!
- The C# to C++–A Somewhat Short Guide by Michael McLaughlin – which I plan on going through when I am done with the Pluralsight videos as a review of sort, the subject seems to be just what I need after all!
DirectX Resources
Meanwhile I am slowly starting to look at DirectX, so I installed the last DirectX SDK from 2010. I think it is now part of the Windows SDK, but my Windows SDK install failed for some reason and it seems like the latest one for Windows 7 is actually older than the standalone one. It should also work OK with the Windows API Code Pack that I will review as a reference, since it has a lot of my C# code for the Direct2D samples which I will need to rewrite for Windows 8 in C++ to code a few things I have been thinking about. MSDN has some interesting samples worth looking at too.
I also installed NShader for HLSL syntax highlighting in Visual Studio, the Shazzam tool for HLSL coding. That’s it for learning on my Windows 7 box. On the Windows 8 boxes I will be limited to VS11 anyway until tool support happens and there – the Windows SDK should already be integrated with the DirectX one.
_codingStyle
After 10 years in the industry I am probably at my peak of caring about the coding style – having my own preferred style in C# – based on ReSharper and StyleCop, but with one parameter/condition per line if all don’t fit in a line. Since C++ does not seem to have a leading style, at least according to WPF Disciples’ resident DirectX expert – Jeremiah Morrill, I am going to try to adopt my C# style to the C++ code and see what comes out. While C# has a few controversial best style options in a couple areas – it is mostly Pascal/camelCased. C++ on the other hand seems to be all over the place, so at least having my own code based in the familiar style might help me orient myself in the world of double colons and pointer arrows…
Having mentioned ReSharper – I really feel like the C++ editor could do more in terms of IntelliSense even if it is not a managed language with all the metadata available. It seems like there are tools that enhance the VS C++ editing experience too. ReSharper is not one of them, but I picked up a trial of Active Assist X and it seems to improve things quite a bit.
C# -> C++/CLI -> Native C++
As the first piece of coding I thought I’d do some comparison between C# and C++ as well as between the managed C++/CLI and the native C++. How long might it take to go through a long loop of integer increments in each of these? Well, it seems like it is rather quick these days with 2 billion iterations taking only 6s in C# and 5s in C++ or C++/CLI to execute the below loop!
for (int i = 0; i < 2000000000; i++);
While this is not a representative piece of code at all – it just shows how closer to the metal C++ is (probably having each iteration take 5 cycles as opposed to 6 cycles for C#). See the measurement code and output samples.
C#
for (;;)
{
var start = DateTime.Now;
Console.WriteLine("Start");
for (int i = 0; i < 2000000000; i++);
Console.WriteLine("End");
var duration = DateTime.Now - start;
Console.WriteLine("{0:F3}s", duration.TotalSeconds);
}
Output
C++/CLI
for (;;)
{
{
DateTime& start = DateTime::Now;
Console::WriteLine("Start");
for (int i = 0; i < 2000000000; i++);
Console::WriteLine("End");
TimeSpan& duration = DateTime::Now - start;
Console::WriteLine("{0:F3}s", duration.TotalSeconds);
}
{
clock_t start = clock(), diff;
std::cout << "Start" << std::endl;
for (int i = 0; i < 2000000000; i++);
std::cout << "End" << std::endl;
diff = clock() - start;
float sec = (float)diff / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
std::cout << sec << "s" << std::endl;
}
}
I have used C++/CLI to a very limited degree before. Looking at the sample above you can see how easy it is to port some basic C# code to C++/CLI which allows you to keep using the so convenient .NET Base Class Library (BCL) while also being able to use the native libraries.
Output
Native C++
for (;;)
{
clock_t start = clock(), diff;
std::cout << "Start" << std::endl;
for (int i = 0; i < 2000000000; i++);
std::cout << "End" << std::endl;
diff = clock() - start;
float sec = (float)diff / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
std::cout << sec << "s" << std::endl;
}
Output
Summary
C# is the most productive and best looking language I have ever used and sure – it is a general purpose language in that you can use it to do all sorts of things, but you can’t do everything in C#, at least not if you want to do some types of Metro Style Applications for Windows 8. Native C++ and DirectX is supported for use in Metro Style Applications, but C++/CLI is not and I don’t believe you can use managed wrappers with DirectX to make them, so if you want to make games for Windows 8 – forget Managed DirectX, XNA, SlimDX, Code Pack and SharpDX. It’s back to C++ baby!
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