Re: (OT) Re: memory management

[Bert Peers <rat@larian.com>]

Borko Jandras wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 06, 1999 at 05:08:08PM +0200, Bert Peers wrote:
> > I have no idea why anno 1999 people keep starting projects with intros like
> > "so I'm starting this game/editor/compiler/... and need some SDKs *but*
> > no C++ !!!".... :(
> Those who speak like that are mostly those that never learned any PL except
> C++. I had too much time on my hands so I learned C, Objective-C, C++, Common
> Lisp, Scheme and Perl.

Actually I should have said : "... and need some SDKs but no OOP".  Because that
is what the general sentiment actually is, the kernel and other "real world" stuff
is still
written in C so that's interpreted like "for the real work, C++ is still too
slow/immature/obfuscated/beta/whatever".  At least that's the impression I get from
watching some Linux developers.  OO is academic and C++ is slow.
  That's what the comment was about, not C++ in particular.  I think Ada95 is better

OO than C++, and Java has some nice stuff too (eg the inner classes).

> My hart goes to Scheme. Objective-C is such a useful and
> clean/small addition to C that I just can't belive nobody uses it. OTOH C++ is
> such a messy bloat that I can't belive anybody would wan't to use it!

This I guess is a matter of taste.  But again that's not what I meant to argue,
maybe you're right in that Objective-C can offer more robustness and cleaner
interfaces if a C++ SDK would be redesigned in O-C - but the problem is that
the Linux community doesn't want OO at all, be it clean or bloated.

> All will argue that C++ offers you many useful things, like function and
> operator overloading, multiple inheritance and templates, but 90% of those will
> later agree that operator overloading is a bad thing and should not be used,
> multiple inheritance creates more problems than it's worth and templates should
> be avoided at all costs. What is left then?

Is that the 90% of the community that's not getting enough time off from their day
jobs to keep educated on the latest software tech ? :^)  I don't know why templates
are evil, and imho overloading is cool too, but talks about may be better taken
offline
(unless nobody, er, objects ofcourse)

> "some SDKs *but* no C++"? Well yes, if using a C++ library means giving up on C,
> Objective-C and Scheme for my project.

Hmyeah, but what's the point then of an otherwise brilliant piece of code like Gtk ?

Have you been checking code that's using that SDK...  Yeah it's C, but the "let's
imitate
C++" semantics is stressed up to the point that the whole thing becomes practically
unreadable.  It's basically OO but with every improvement that this would bring and
which would normally be implemented by the compiler, done by hand the hard way.
I don't know, don't mean to ramble here but I just can't get my head round to the
way
some developers reason.  Talking about the wrong tool for the job, imho...
  Or maybe this is all just happening because until recently the GNU C++ couldn't
touch the GNU C compiler, and templates were all goofy too...

Bert
--

-=<Short Controlled Bursts>=-