I used to love her, but i had to kill her.....

Surely one of the main reaossn there are so many C++ developers still out there is the amount of lagacy stuff that you can get for it. Importing a DLL into c# may be easy, but try doing that with a lib file and a header. I came from the ASM, C, C++ lineage, and currently enjoy the benefits of C#/.net. Going back to C++ reminds me of how painful some of it is, but also how simple and elegant some of it is too.

When I was taught C, the main benefit was apparently the fact that it was portable (I laugh in retrospect). My main grpe with C++ these days is that most people Ive met dont realise where C++ ends and MFC/Win32/whatever begins, negating most of its portability. A friend of mine told me that writing to a database was easy in C++. All the code was MFC-based. Try porting that to *nix, or whatever other system you can think of. Good C++ programmers will always be in demand, and bad ones will be too, as C++ is considered by almost everyone I know as a "low level" language, thus carries some Kudos with it these days. Bear in mind these people learnt nothing but Java at Uni, and pointers are hardcore, apparently.

I miss the hackery of my early C and C++ days. I think each language signifies an era in my life - assembler i did in Turbo Assembler. C in Turbo C in DOS. C++ in Turbo C++ on Win 95 (writing graphics apps in Mode 13H - those were the days - back when these was Windows sat on DOS). C++ Builder on Win 98, and C# on XP. Each iteration has added something to the last, but also lost something on the way. I keep meaning to find the time to go back and write some small assembler apps, just to reinforce some of those basic principles that we take for granted..........