Originally posted by bryce777


I do not think so.

I am not sure that was ever really the case, even.

It was 95 when people started to take c++ seriously, and it has never been a big business oriented language, losing ground to vb and then java even as it started to become more widespread.

Most shrinkbox apps are done in C++, but that is a small, small percentage of all the programming done today when you look at all the large custom systems done (and many, many still in COBOL for business stuffor FORTRAN for scientific stuff)and all the web-related programming and all the embedded programming and all the drivers etc. in your OS which are probably bigger than the OS itself, almost none of which is done in C++.

C++ is pretty much on the way out of the mainstream, now that an ADA-like language such as Java or C# can achieve much better performance than ADA could with the hardware and technology of the past (JIT compile etc.) and 5-15% performance for most applciations means little compared to development speed and stability.
Going of of Bryce777, I thought coming out of college that C++ was the be all and end all of programming, but when I started working with businnes applications, I was sadly mistaken. In what I've seen, you use C++ if you are writting a distributed application or something that requires complex logic. For example, our entire inventory and shipping system at work is written in RPGLE, with the exception of the socket driver programs. Those are written in C++ since sockets are easy to use and the EBCIDC to ASCII conversions are easy to do. All of the retail and order entry systems are in COBOL and so are AP and payroll, and the web apps are HTML and Java. Any of the smaller database apps are written in VB or purely queried from a SQL Server. This is software maintenance/developement for a medium sized company. I'm sure if you have a large staff and time to spend writing C++ apps it would be different, but that's the choice you have to make when finding the perfect job.