Browser have shifted from document viewers to application platform quite a while ago now. I was mocking the OP because he seemed to imply that browser ARE document viewers when they're clearly more than that. Very clearly.

By the way, GMail doesn't suck. Nor does outlook365. Nor does amazon or any other e-commerce platform. Clearly they're not catalogs of online documents, so the shift might have been apparent and browsers are pretty good at it.

Also, in the wake of the NSA revelations by Snowden, I don't think anyone has any doubt that there are holes and zero-days in pretty much every stack of every OS out there. USB, Network, Browsers, Encryption libs, everywhere. Browsers are just at the top of the stack, so they get picked on more often.

Java is also a strong contender over here. I'd even argue that for headless apps (CLI or deamons) it does a better job.

Welcome to the eighties where browsers are document viewers.

You seem to forget Vista in there buddy. Also, this is the first time this is happening, so let's not get carried away.. I'll wait to see how all this rolls out.

The problem is that you need to upgrade your OS (and therefore need to pay) to get a good upgrade of your browser. No other browser vendor enforce this. THIS is why people are stuck with old versions of IE.

AND IT SUCKS.

(Was I yelling right there?)

Not quite exactly what I was talking about, but close: http://www.pcworld.com/article...

If you've got a keylogger (or any king of process) running locally, no amount of encryption is going to save you. That's how they got some of the ISIS members, by just running a TOR node and sending infected page to everyone that got out through their node. As a result they infected ISIS members using TOR along with everyone else on the TOR network vulnerable to their infection.

Knowing they're inside the firmware of your HDDs, I think they're aware of this.

I thought the same about the iPad. I saw no need for myself and as I struggled to find needs for others, I couldn't. I was literally thinking "What the hell are they thinking".

It worked.

Since then I don't make no predictions anymore. And I try to warn occasional bystanders that make broad claims.

We'll see.

Let's say their success ratio (#products successful vs flops) is way above the rest since 2000.

It's not Evil, Bad and Wrong, but it's way too powerful. It's so powerful you can actually write your entire program with macros. This means people (like beginners) might be tempted to get too much logic in there and shit happened right there that anyone maintaining the code will have to stir or rewrite.

It's like operators overload and your numerics analogy. It's nice. Sometimes I wish i had it in Java because nicely used it's powerful. But then you can do crazy stuff with them that will confuse to hell most programmers trying to figure out what you wanted to do in the first place. That's the definition of write-only code.

You don't have to but other people might. And when it's your turn to maintain their code, then, oh shit... But it shouldn't since it's C++, you're supposed to be fluent with it.

You choose not to use them but the day you're asked to maintain someone else's code full of macros, bang, you're in (or out if you choose to leave or refuse the project of course).

.NET and Swing don't change the language, they add APIs. STL and Boost ... Well, let's not even get started. In C++ you can write your entire program with the C99 preprocessor, there is not even any need to write C++ to do things. The preprocessor itself is turing complete. Talk about over engineering.

Are you comparing the complexity of Java vs C++ (as a language, not as a runtime)? Are you kidding?

You can write convoluted code in any language, this is true. But C++ code can be made UNREADABLE as well as convoluted. In Java, there is only the one way of writing things. You can architect them differently if you want, but there's usually one way to write them. In C++, you have a hundred. THIS is the problem with C++. And let's not even talk about macros which is one more way to write things. You can actually write your whole program only through macros. Macros are turing-complete. They're just a language inside the language... This is pure madness.