Thanks for the upvotes. You are right about both of these subsets pointing to other languages; I had not thought about that!
I myself throw pointers around all over the place because I am restricted by my Windows compiler (no C++11 features) and I don't do stupid things with them (and am a slow learner for new features...).
I suppose the performance gains are negligible in simple applications but in performance critical applications they can make a difference - games, web servers etc. See how Facebook built their PHP to C++ interpreter for reduction in running costs and heating costs. PHP was more convenient to write (and PHP developers are cheaper to hire I presume) but I wouldn't welcome all programs being of the "interpreted" type.
With C++, the push for type safety and making the compiler do the work for you will mean more efficient programs and less run-time checks. This is particularly important on mobile devices where processing usage = less battery life. And I would be far happier running an application for a few extra hours on my laptop if it was written in a sensible language and made efficient use of my hardware; lots of little performance gains add up.
Imagine the horror of apps being written entirely for developer convenience with little thought to performance - you could kiss goodbye to a big stack of power worldwide. That problem is only going to get worse, and the "there's processing power so I'll use it" approach is what gave us bloatware in the first place.
So I suppose application and system program development is a tradeoff between developer convenience and user convenience (battery life, speed etc.)
I myself throw pointers around all over the place because I am restricted by my Windows compiler (no C++11 features) and I don't do stupid things with them (and am a slow learner for new features...).
I suppose the performance gains are negligible in simple applications but in performance critical applications they can make a difference - games, web servers etc. See how Facebook built their PHP to C++ interpreter for reduction in running costs and heating costs. PHP was more convenient to write (and PHP developers are cheaper to hire I presume) but I wouldn't welcome all programs being of the "interpreted" type.
With C++, the push for type safety and making the compiler do the work for you will mean more efficient programs and less run-time checks. This is particularly important on mobile devices where processing usage = less battery life. And I would be far happier running an application for a few extra hours on my laptop if it was written in a sensible language and made efficient use of my hardware; lots of little performance gains add up.
Imagine the horror of apps being written entirely for developer convenience with little thought to performance - you could kiss goodbye to a big stack of power worldwide. That problem is only going to get worse, and the "there's processing power so I'll use it" approach is what gave us bloatware in the first place.
So I suppose application and system program development is a tradeoff between developer convenience and user convenience (battery life, speed etc.)