About Reason
Reason is a cross platform framework designed to bring the ease of use of Java, .Net, or Python to
developers who require the performance and strength of C++.
The current 2.x interim release contains many improvements including; a revised project and namespace structure, new more integrated
iterator design, smart pointers, enhanced process and thread management, enhanced http protocol support, enhanced networking
and interface support, enhanced database support, unicode encoding/decoding, full native C++ event/delegate signal/slot support.
Future full releases will include features like ipc/messaging, atomic operations, new collections, memory management, javascript, and
much more.
Why use Reason ?
When a lot of developers talk about why one language is better than another, they are really comparing
frameworks. The language defines the syntax and the compiler, but it is the frameworks which make a
language mainstream.
Not that C++ isn't successful, because it is. Most of the worlds software is still written in either C or C++, and there
are good reasons for this.
But there is a lot of software which isn't, simply because people have either
assumed that it is not possible to write maintainable cross platform code in C++, or because the effort required
to learn the language and its libraries has been too high.
C++ has for a long time suffered with powerful but esoteric frameworks which are difficult to use and overly
complicated. And the standards bodies spend far too much time focusing on obscure language features which adhere to
a broken metaphor.
STL and Boost have their place in the scientific community and the hard core C++ users, but they do a great
injustice to the language. C++ is far more than templates and metaprogramming.
When presented appropriately C++ can be just as easy to use and as productive as Java, .Net, or Python.
Its just a matter of keeping things simple.