One interesting piece of history about this project is that they switched from using C/GTK to using C++/QT recently and apparently with very good results. Especially interesting given the way Linus' past comments on C++ have been so widely replayed.

here's a link to the talk: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

If it is a real trend and a real statistic then please link to some reference for this. I'm interested to see. Maybe I'm not very good at Google searches but I cannot find any reliable statistics to support this.

I code mostly in C++ and C# and have no trouble at all with C#. It's one of my favourite languages. My post however was not about myself, I was paraphrasing the original question, as perhaps I've missed something but the statement "why you are asking for citation when the whole discussion is sort of based on this issue" is completely at odds with how I read the original question - i.e. (very much paraphrasing here) 'Should I learn C# it seems to be the way forward'

Though even if your interpretation of the original question is correct, it would still not seem unreasonable to ask for a reference to support the statement that .NET is losing popularity. The only evidence of this "fact" I can see on this thread is mis-matched anecdotes, hence my reply to your post.

I'm not the OP but while Java is not a bad programming language at all, in my opinion C# is much nicer. It is pretty much Java but with more features and candy. Java has finally caught up with a few of the big ones - e.g. lambdas, try-resource to match C#'s using blocks, the streaming API to kind of capture part of LINQ's functionality and default methods to kind of match extension methods as a way to do mixins.

It's still lacks a lot of features though - e.g. generics with support for unboxed types and runtime type checking, unsigned types, stack allocated arrays/structs, support for unsafe code and pointers, coroutines, type inference on variable declerations, properties and property initializer syntax, operator overloading, language level support for async programming constructs, nullable types and the '??' operator, dynamic types, .etc. C# 6 will also be adding the '.?' to allow propagation of null through chained methods

In addition to this I feel like the core .NET libraries have generally benefited from the hindsite of seeing where Java went wrong / could be improved on.

Agreed about the docs. MSDN documentation in general is horrendous. It lacks critical information and is generally written in a completly impenetrable way. They also rely on crappy machine translation for non-English languages, ugh.

There is one good reason for avoiding checked exceptions though. Interfaces. In Java it is required that either 1. all exceptions that might ever be thrown by implementations of an interface be declared at the interface decleration or 2. all exceptions be bundled in RuntimeExceptions to short circuit the checked exception mechanism anyway (with the potential side effect of ruining stack traces).

As far as catching exceptions go, imo unless you are going to do something specific to deal with an exception, then catching it is bad coding practice. E.g. Catching a SocketException to implement retry logic - sure go for it. Catching an exception to log it and rethrow (or worse throw your own custom exception and ruin the stack trace) - do this as high up the call stack as possible.

As far as I can see the premise of the original question is that 'my employees like .NET but I'm happy in C and about to retire, should I bother learning it'? Nothing about that implies that .NET is fading. In fact it seems to imply the exact opposite to me. In the hypothetical situation that it did imply that .NET is fading though, that still wouldn't make it a fact. Is there actual evidence that .NET is failing? All I can see on this Slashdot thread is mis-matched anecdotes.

From (mostly indirect) experience, maybe it does for CRUD apps. For complicated applications though you might get ~30% code sharing and a lot of pain.

I'm not a geophysicist but I do write software for the field so so I do have some limited knowledge of it. With the disclaimer out of the way, forgive me if I am wrong but:

1. Would anistropy mater much in this situation? I know it matters a lot in seismic tomography but the magnitude of the waves here is, well, of a completly different order of magnitude (excuse the pun). Would the physics creating angle dependent and/or horizontal velocity variations in the crust still hold up? Would they mater much on this scale? Presumably the waves are spending most of the time traveling through the mantle.

2. Similarly is being exactly spherically symmetric that important? Are the other stellar bodies were the antipodal phenomenon has been observed exactly spherically symmetric?

http://www.newgeology.us/presentation35.html provides a reasonably good summary of the pro-antipodal argument. Even if the waves are not focusing on an exact point with equally timed first-arrivals you could still reasonably expect see something resembling antipodal effects.

The circumfrence of the earth is ~40,000km, being 10,000km off implies being a quater of the world away. I can't see that looking at the map provided by mbone. The map divides the earth into 12 longitude sections with the rough location of the impact crater and the Indian land mass being seperated by 6 longitude sections. Similarly the impact site and the location of the Indian land mass are roughly symmetric about the equator.

From the link:

Far from definite but the evidence is far stronger than you are making out.

I went to a Christian school and this was hardly a secret. We had to take Christian Studies classes, where we learnt the history of Christianity including things like this.

Organized relegion is not just composed of faith but also of tradition and social order. In Christianity faith is belief in Jesus and hence God. Chrismas on the other hand is a mater of tradition, and to some degree social order. The fact that it was originally a pagan festival does not lessen its importants as a mater of Christian tradition.

Similar distinctions can be seen in religions around the world. In Islam (in my limited understanding), faith is the belief in Muhammed as the final prophet of God, while tradition and social order are primarily determined by Sharia Law. Sharia Law in itself is only in part derived from the Quran. As many Islamic communities have faced what they feel are existential crisis, they have turned to tradition and hence stricter observation of Sharia law.

In Japan, Shinto could be seen to exist as a 'relegion' but it is in reality devoid of all aspects of faith. It continues to exist as a mater of tradition with the observance of thousands (probably tens of thousands) of festivals/observances at shrines around the country. On the face of it, these festivals exist to (mostly) placate look Shinto 'Gods'. However, nobody seriously believes in these local 'Gods'. Even with Budhism the faith aspect is generaly very weak. Probably the biggest aspect of 'Budhist' faith in Japan is the visting of ancestral graves, which is closer to ancestor whorship than Budhism.

I'm sure there are similar examples from plenty of other countries as well but these sprang to mind.

To be clear I don't hate C++ at all. I find it a very powerful and expressive language but if the project requirements allow for it I'd rather use Java/C#. They're much more productive language to program in imo. No waiting for compiles, better tooling (e.g. refactoring), nice runtime errors, and the relative ease of integrating third party libraries being the main factors.

Couldn't agree more with you about Microsoft VC++. Clang is sooo much nicer.