[ale] C programming books

[Joseph Rattz Jr]

> Perhaps
> you should upgrade
> your tools as well because you failed to even claim
> a substantive
> problem with the C++ language in your entire post.
> Just tool FUD.

But, Ben that is THE problem.  I don't have the
authority to change the tools at every company I do
work for.  I am a contractor, and I have to use what
they provide and are willing to pay for.  And, for the
most part, they are what I have told you about.  Part
of the problem is that ANSI took too long deciding the
standard, and now everyone had been doing their own
thing for soooo long.  No, my STL books are both
recently published.

> 	Funny but I generally recommend people use Java,
> WEB, or some design
> tool for a GUI. You're certainly welcome to your

I never said C++ was the best language for GUI
development, merely that it would be more productive
than C for a desktop application.


> not appropriate
> for most application development. Its purpose was to

I feel exactly opposite.  I feel that C is better for
most development, and that C++ is only better for
things that the class libraries highly leverage and
are not performance sensitive.  And again, this is
only due to the class libraries that could be written
in C.  If you are going to recommend the language just
due to the productivity you gain by using a class
library, then you also have to consider the negative
impact of the bad class libraries that are also out
there.  And one place I worked had that sort of thing.
 They had C libraries that had container code, even
code to move data structures to dialog boxes and
vice-versa.  I would hate to use a server that is
developed in C++, it WILL be about 5-10 times slower. 
A friend of mine benchmarked C, C++, and Perl and
found Perl to be quicker!  If the performance of the
code will only affect a single user, then it is
bearable, hence my statement that it is okay for
desktop applications, but if the preformance will
affect thousands of users, such as a web server, mail
server, any type of server or back-end process, you
are going to get hurt.  And, I would agree that if you
are doing front-end work, I would shoot for something
that works in a browser.


> appropriate choice. It isn't in standard business
> applications either.

What standard business applications?  You mean the
ones written 20 years ago in COBOL?


> 	Only as complex as you need it to be. Certainly
> doesn't have to be
> more complex than C and is often less so.

I am just compiling the declaration of a map, and the
debugger core dumps.  How can I make it less complex? 
At it's least complex, it is C complex.




--- Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey at switchco.com> wrote:
> Joseph Rattz Jr wrote:
> > 
> > > I recommend that you buy a C++ book instead and
> > > learn that. There is
> > > absolutely no reason to learn plain old C any
> more
> > 
> > I just have to make an issue out of this
> statement.  I
> > am a C and C++ programmer and I am going to take a
> > public stand and say that I think C is suprerior
> to
> > C++ for most work, with the possible exception of
> GUI.
> 
> 	Funny but I generally recommend people use Java,
> WEB, or some design
> tool for a GUI. You're certainly welcome to your
> opinion but to make
> an issue it helps to make a substantive claim in
> your point.
> 
> >  And that exception is only due to the nice class
> > libraries that have been provided for free that
> could
> > have easily existed for C, but didn't for some
> reason.
> 
> 	Sure there are. Bunches of them. GNOME is based on
> a more recent one
> and I've been using others since 1989.
> 
> > I have heard people say that C was bad because it
> was
> > too complex due to the pointers and memory
> management
> > required.  Well...C++ inproves on this?!?  Please!
> 
> 	This is a straw tiger. I never said C was bad, just
> not appropriate
> for most application development. Its purpose was to
> be a very
> portable assembly language for writing system level
> code, something
> which it excels at and is why linux and most gnu
> code uses C. Why
> wasn't EMAC's scripting language C? Would have been
> easier than
> writing the lisp interpreter at the time. Simply
> wasn't the
> appropriate choice. It isn't in standard business
> applications either.
> 
> > I feel that in all the places I have worked only
> about
> > 10% of the C programmers should have been allowed
> to
> > touch the code.  The other 90% should have been
> > fetching soft drinks or coffee.  
> 
> 	Possibly true but definitely irrelevant to the
> subject at hand.
> 
> > And, make no mistake, C++ is far more complex.
> 
> 	Only as complex as you need it to be. Certainly
> doesn't have to be
> more complex than C and is often less so.
> 
> > Right now, I have inherited a C++ application that
> > compiles clean, and runs.  The first time it runs,
> it
> > core dumps.  The second time it runs, it produces
> > output that is accepted as usable.  However, if I
> try
> > to debug it, it causes a sig10 and core dumps the
> > debugger (dbx) on program load.  So, I can't debug
> it.
> >  BTW, we are talking Solaris 2.5.1, their C++ 4.2
> > compiler, and something like version 11s of rogue
> wave
> > I think.  The rogue wave seems to only be used for
> its
> > stl. 
> 
> 	So you've got a junk project with badly written
> code. Wow, *that*
> never happens with C! :-) You're also using old
> compilers and a poorly
> designed library. STL for RougeWave was an
> afterthought developed on
> top of their own proprietary container classes which
> were never any
> good to begin with. Sounds like you have tool
> problems not language
> problems.
> 
> <more tool complaints snipped>
> 
> > Some syntax errors in my code cause the compiler
> to
> > core dump.  Never had that happen in C on any
> platform
> > I have used.
> 
> 	Oh??? Try several versions of the M$oft C compiler
> as well as other
> less popular ones. Many legal C constructs could
> break them.
>  
> > I have two books covering STL and they aren't the
> > same.  The same basic example in the books has
> > different syntax and slightly different methods,
> as I
> > racall.  One works with my compiler, and the other
> > doesn't.
> 
> 	..now he complains about books..
> 
> 	Since you don't give any examples I cannot be
> definitive but there
> *are* many valid syntactical constructs in the STL
> thanx to its heavy
> templating and generic/functional programming
> paradigm. Probably old
> books or, more likely, old tools.
>  
> > A friend of mine was having a memory violation on
> an
> > NT Server app written with VC++ 5.0.  I debugged
> it to
> > a bug in the xstring header file.  There is a HUGE
> bug
> > if you are using the string template where if you
> > assign a smaller string literal to a stirng
> tamplate
> > that once contained a larger string literal, it
> will
> > violate memory.  I can;t believe a bug like this
> could
> > exist in such a basic class that is used by so
> many.
> > When I found the bug, my friend contacted customer
> > support, and they had no official code fix.  Their
> > official work-around was to assign an empty string
> to
> > the template before assinging it to a bigger
> string.
> > You had to do this every time you reassigned a
> value
> > to the string!!!  However, he was dissatisfied
> with
> > this and begged till they gave him an unofficial
> code
> > fix.  When he got off the phone, he found it
> wouldn't
> > even compile!  They actually called him bact to
> tell
> > him they forgot to give him part of it.  Once he
> got
> > it to compile, it still didn't fix the problem! 
> In
> > the meantime, I had notice that PJ Plauger was
> listed
> > as the author and had found his web site.  I
> > corresponded with him through e-mail to find out
> that
> > he was aware of the bug and had a corrected header
> > file.  And, it worked!!!  Odd that MS didn't have
> it
> > available!?
> 
> 	Microsoft has never produced anything resembling an
> ANSI compliant
> C++ compiler (much less C). Why do you insist on
> selecting the worst
> development tools available? Jeepers - you're on a
> LINUX email list
> claiming that C++ is bad because of a MICROSOFT
> compiler. I sorta
> doubt this argument carries much credibility here.
> 
> 	<more ranting snipped>
> 
> > Now, to bring this to an on topic point.  I am
> glad
> > that at this point, most of Unix/Linux is C based,
> and
> > I personally hope it stays that way.  It will be
> > faster and more stable that way.
> 
> 	C was the correct language to use at the time and
> probably still is.
> Once the C++ standard grows more mature (and gets a
> standard ABI) then
> you'll be hard pressed to find a C compiler that
> doesn't also happen
> to be a C++ compiler. BTW... every major Linux
> vendor either has or is
> switching to the egcs compiler which happens to be
> one of the most
> ANSI compliant C++ compilers on the market. Perhaps
> you should upgrade
> your tools as well because you failed to even claim
> a substantive
> problem with the C++ language in your entire post.
> Just tool FUD.
> 
> 	regards & later,
> 
> 		Ben Scherrey
> 
> 

===
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