Libraries

[BloodMachine34]

I was wondering if the professional programmers use already provided libraries such as iostream.h, or do they build everything from scratch?

[jim mcnamara]

Most programmers have libraries of stuff we use - we got it from our old projects, other programmer's projects, vendor libraries, you name it.

This is the reason for things like MFC. When you're paid to get something up, get it fixed, or whatever, you DO NOT code from scratch unless you have to.

Also, when you work in a big shop there are code standards, plus big libraries of routines to call on. You have to write in such a way that someone else can work with your code.

I can write a very complex report in C, doing extensive Oracle i/o in about 500-1000 lines. If I had no base libraries this same exercise would be 6000+ lines minimum.

[Wynd]

Yeah, they do, imagine if they had to rewrite the API or the string class from scratch every time they want to use them.