[ale] Language Jihad!

Wandered Inn esoteric at denali.atlnet.com
Wed Jul 18 15:10:39 EDT 2001


Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> 
> On Monday 16 July 2001 04:40 pm, Wandered Inn wrote:
> > To do C++ right, requires a huge amount of setup.  It's worse than
> > cobol.  You've got to create all your classes properly.  Now, to take
> > advantage of this, you must reuse code.
> >
> > No one writes C++ properly, no one reuses code.  Personal experience.
> 
>         Good software is complex and requires a good architecture

Agreed.

> C++ is one of the
> only languages that doesn't pretend otherwise. I've been developing
> platform-independent (this is different than just portable) software using
> C++ since 1990. I guess this means that I write C++ properly and reuse code.
> I know several others who do as well.

Take it as a figure of speech.  I know there are folks out there who 'do
it the right way.'  That is the way it should be.  The key is, you must
have a good understanding of OO concepts, or you're doomed to fail.

> Indeed, myself and a group of three
> other developers did in six months what was predicted to require a group of
> 25 C programmers two years to acomplish. This kind of productivity
> improvement is common in projects I've participated in.

I don't believe it.  Maybe if it's because the comparison was apples to
oranges, in that you reused C++ code, verses the C programmers doing it
from scratch.  Otherwise, someone's blowing smoke.

> 
>         Critics of C++ claim its too complex. Certainly, to use all of C++, you've
> got a long learning curve. However, its not necessary to know more than 25%
> of the language's features to take great advantage of it.


This is ludicrous.  So which 25% do you learn?  How do you know you're
doing it the right way if you don't know the language?

> C++ was designed
> with the concept in mind that "you don't pay for what you don't use". So long
> as it keeps to this credo the language will endure forever. FWIW, its
> similarities to C are sometimes unfortunate

Seeing as how it's a super set of C, it's kind of difficult for it to
NOT be similar to C.

--
Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit
to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
intelligence." - Albert Einstein
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