[ale] Language Jihad!

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Casey Allen Shobe wrote:
> 
> > > I realize that I'm in the minority in thinking that C++ is junk that
> > > should be vaporized when the powers that be also vaporize other evil such
> > > as M$.
> >
> > 80% of the code I write is C++, and I'd have to second that opinion >-]
> 
> I am curious why all the disgruntlement with C++ exists, as I haven't really
> seen such before.  What do you guys think is better than C++?  I was
> considering learning C++ better (I only know a very very little), primarily
> because all of KDE2 is written in it, but if not C++, then what's worth
> learning?  And what's wrong with C++?

It's not disgruntlement, exactly. If I have a complex piece of
low-level functionality to implement, I'd rather use C++ than
C, because I think of things in OO terms, and OO in C is
inconvenient.

The problem I have with C++ basically stems from all the "Learn
C++ in 24 Hours" books you see on the shelves these days (not
as many as five years ago, but still pretty numerous). C++
is *not* a language anyone can learn in 24 hours: it has
all the low-level issues inherited from C wrt memory managment
etc, but buries them under an order of magnitude greater
complexity. I pick up those books and look at them from time to
time, and without fail they neglect to mention language features
that you *must* know about in order to write correct C++ code.
(Examples for the initiated: virtual dtors, delete vs delete[].)
The result of the C++ fad is that there is an enormous amount of
horrible, broken C++ code in the world, and an enourmous number
of incompetent C++ programmers. This is not entirely the fault
of those programmers!

There are other languages that let you do what you want, that
have a feature set comparable to C++, and which you can
learn more or less completely in a couple of weeks. Use
them if you can.

MHO, as always.

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
* Evolution is an "unproven theory" in the same sense that gravity is. *
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