Why C and C++ are not used in Web Application Development?

👤 Diwas Poudel 🕒 15 May 2022 📁 TECH

Describing Why C and C++ are not used in Web Application Development are described within 5 minutes with appropriate reason in this article? - C and C++ are considered to be a wall of programming. These are the first programming languages you learn when you enrol in computer science, where you use Turbo C++ (in general) with a black screen and write small commands to implement various data structures and algorithms. As a result, it is commonly used as a language for academic degrees by engineers and IT students.

IT Students who are trained in C and C++ in universities are not able to meet the need of the general IT market and are not able to solve real-life problems with the knowledge of C and C++ that they have learned in your universities. So, I personally suggest please do not learn C and C++ thinking for building web applications. There are lots of other languages that do the task in an easy way. Learn important concepts and data structure in general from C and C++.

Before moving forward let's briefly discuss these two programming languages.

C Programming Language:

C is a Procedural Programming Language developed by Dennis Ritchie in around 1969 AD. It is a function-driven language where the function is considered a building block. And focus on method instead of data. Due to a lack of OOP, they do not support polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation.

C++ Language

C++ is both a procedural and object-oriented programming paradigm developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979. It is known to object driven language where more focus is given to data and objects. They support polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation.C++ seems to be more structured and secure than C due to the presence of various levels of modifiers or access code to the different parts of the code.

Though they are different but share similarities.

Similarities between C and C++ language

Both are general purpose, low-level programming languages closer to hardware. Both have to manually manage memory for the program. They have no garbage collectors like another high-level language.

It is better to learn C than C++ then you can easily adapt to other languages. But this does not mean that you can learn other high-level languages like python, java, and C# at first. Only things this learning C and C++ makes you clear in procedural and Object-Oriented Concepts.

A good source for learning C and C++: cprogramming.com

Useful Contents:

Also Read: Why windows os is more popular than other OS?

C and C++ in Web and Desktop Development

A few years ago, web-based technologies and services were not popular at this time, many of the CGI Application and webserver code was written in C and C++ (Microsoft's ISAPI or ATLServer frameworks)(source), but cloud computing and web-based technology have emerged and changed drastically and C++ was not able to cope the changes and scripting language and various backend language like PHP, Java, C#, Python, etc where developed in web industry and this language makes easier for a developer to work with it. So, C and C++ went behind in the web development industry.

Why C and C++ are not used much used in Web Development?

1 Lack of Industrial Standard Rapid Web Application Development Framework

C and C++ language doesn't have a mature and stable rapid web application development Framework like other high-level language framework.

High-Level Language	Web Framework
C#	Asp.Net Framework
Java	Spring Framework
Python	Django Framework, Flask Framework
Php	Laravel Framework, Codeignitor Framework

Popular C++ web application framework are : TreeFrog, CppCMS .These are not mature enough to fulfil current needs.

Web Framework	Description
TreeFrog	It is a high-performance full-stack C++ framework for developing Web Applications supporting HTTP and Web Socket Protocol. It is written in C++/Qt. The framework is just a collection of libraries. And TreeFrog still does not have the rich libraries that other rapid web framework does.
CppCMS	It is a high-performance Web Application Framework that mainly focuses on performance demanding web applications.It supports FastCGI,SCGI,Http.(source)

It is also hard to write, debug, and maintain business logic with C++.

2 Low-Level Programming and Compilation Dependent Language

C/C++ has compiled language which converts code directly into machine-dependent binary code. But in the case of Java/C#, it gets compiled to an intermediate code called bytecode(in Java), and MSIL(in C#), these are machine-independent codes which makes them runnable in any environment on any OS. Due to directly converted into machine-dependent code, C and C++ are not portable.

So, code written in Windows may not work on Linux and vice versa because every machine is different and every binary compiled code is specific to hardware and OS.

Only one solution gets the source code written in C/C++ and compiled it in a specific platform. If windows, then compiled code in a windows environment and if Linux then compiled in Linux environment. and soon. Otherwise, you can use the Virtual Machine concept, but these all are tedious work.

3 No much plugin support and less library support

C++ programmers usually do not have rich library support as another language has. So, if C++ programmers want to do the new things then they may not get the library to play with them. So, the C++ programmer forcefully has to build themselves which is very tedious and difficult.

Some popular C++ libraries are :

Library	Description
POCO C++ Library	User for networking:encryption ,Http
sockpp	Simple and Modern C++ socket library.
Httpp	Production-ready HTTP server.
Silicon C++ 14 Web Framework	Robust and fast WEB API

(source)

The lack of standard tools and libraries is one of the key reasons C++ is not widely used to build web applications.

4 Syntax

C and C++ syntax are difficult in comparison to other high-level languages. A high-level language is constantly adding new features and syntax to do any work quickly and efficiently, but C++ and C syntax are not added as frequently as others.

5 Playing with Pointers:

The developer has to carefully play with a pointer for memory allocation and deallocation which is a difficult task.

Also read: Microsoft technology stack

6 Memory Allocation and Garbage Collection

You don't have much to worry about garbage collection with C #, Java, or Python. There are automatic garbage collection facilities. But in C++ we have to carefully allocate and deallocate memory for objects.

Improperly allocating and deallocating memory may cause unexpected behaviours in an application and server.

7 New Technology Adoption

In this advanced cloud computing era, lots of new web technology and concept are developing, and C++ is still focusing only on system-level programming.

8 No backed support by large companies

C# is supported and promoted by Microsoft, while Java is supported and promoted by Oracle. These are their own intellectual property, which they have heavily patented. However, C is not owned by any company and is not directly supported by any company.

9 Server Crashes

If you host a web service written in C++, the server may crash and the OS will close all sockets if there is a problem due to bad static and dynamic memory allocation.

10 Web Debugging Supporting IDE

Most of the C++ IDE do not have Web Debugging.

11 Hosting is expensive(For cloud-based hosting):

Hosting for the C++ program is expensive.

Also read: Can I delete photos after uploaded to Google Photos?

12 Not hosting provider available for C++

C++ generates native code, and no web hosting provider allows you to upload CGI binary programs. You could also host or rent a VM yourself. Both options may be more expensive than commonly available cloud Website hosting services. And is only available for high-level languages.

13 Difficult to Learn

C++ and C are difficult to learn and frustrate the learner as they could not develop anything from the beginning whereas, in python, java, u can do that in less time.

People who want to build web application does not like to learn all complicated stuff present in C++ even for building simple real-life application. But they sooner or later may become frustrated and change the language.

14 JSON support

Data in web applications are mainly transferred in the form of JSON. And JSON in C++ is painful.

15 Large Development time and time to market

Because of the lack of packages and libraries, creating web applications or any software in C++ takes time. As a result, it may take a developer longer to build it.

16 Less Developer

It is difficult to get a developer who can code in C++. Also, they are a highly complex language that only a few people understand well.

17 High Development Cost

As there are fewer developers so obviously they charge more for building applications and also server cost is more.

18 Lack of Learning Source

There are fewer C and C++ web application forums and RSS feeds. If there are, they are also poorly managed, making it difficult for novice and average developers to learn from them.

19 Difficult to fix the bug.

C++ is an unsafe language when code has to be updated constantly and if problems occur then it is difficult to debug and fix it. And if one develops an application and if left the company and if another came then it will be difficult to understand that code and manage if especially in case of bug fixing.