Re: (OT) Re: memory management

[Borko Jandras <bjandras@public.srce.hr>]

On Tue, Sep 07, 1999 at 02:40:32AM +0200, Bert Peers wrote:
> 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.

I would say that the opinion goes that any PL other than C should be avoided
for SDKs just because it is not C. Nothing about C++ or OO. This is IMHO a
valid point and a point I'm behind 100%. Is C heaven sent? No. Should C be
replaced by something better? Yes. Is C++ that thing? Absolutely NO! Does that
thing exist right now? No.

C is still mr. PL because of:
  - tradition
  - large user base
  - as said in `CORBA Applications In GNOME': "C has the advantage of
    being the lowest common denominator of almost all other language
    implementations." Therefore it's relatively easy to write bindings to other
    languages.

> > "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...

Gtk+ doesn't imitate C++, it's imitating Xt. And the whole thing is far from
unreadable. See above for reasons why it's implemented this way and not in some
OO language.

>   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...

I think (read: "hope") this is happening because C++ is recognized as
A Bad Programming Language. (C is ugly; C++ inherited all of C's ugliness and
added some more). If (when??) more than 50% of Linux's libraries that are de
facto libraries for some purpose (like ncurses being de facto lib for terminal
handling, gtk+ approaching being de facto widgets lib) become C++, I'll quit
any programming related activities.

-- 
Borko Jandras	<bjandras@public.srce.hr>