Re: Simplicity has a future
- From: "James Dow Allen" <jdallen2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 May 2006 01:32:14 -0700
The notion that C++ is "better" than C because it is (almost) a
superset,
is a very bad notion and should be stamped out. (C++ of course is not
an exact superset anyway, but that dead horse is already being beaten
to death again in another subthread.)
Dennis Ritchie's famous comments on adding new keywords to C may shed
some light on why adding features to a language is not an unmixed
blessing:
This is an essay on why I do not like X3J11 type qualifiers....
Let me begin by saying that I'm not convinced that even the pre-December
qualifiers (`const' and `volatile') carry their weight; I suspect that what
they add to the cost of learning and using the language is not repaid in
greater expressiveness.
... Nevertheless, I don't argue for the extirpation of qualifiers, if only because
it is too late.
For those who want to read the entire essay, Google search for its most
famous line:
Noalias must go. This is non-negotiable.
If supersets are so good, why didn't PL/1 catch on? It was sort of
a superset of Fortran, Cobol and some Algol.
Frankly, I find it much more fun to program in a simple language!
(And a happy programmer is a productive programmer!)
jacob navia wrote:
Tomás wrote:
The reason why C++ has waned in popularity is because ...
intellectual people are in the minority, and therefore dumbed-down
languages like Java, Visual Basic and C# have seen a growth in
popularity.
Look Tomas,
you should restrain from insulting other people just because they refuse
to learn all the complexities of C++.
No, we should all be grateful that such an awesome genius condescends
to spend time in this newsgroup, of the Language for Dummies. :-)
C has less surprises, less to learn, and uses FAR LESS MEMORY.
... HUMAN MEMORY, a far more precious resource than RAM!
Transparency is what I like! We know exactly what malloc() and free()
do, but may have to study an inheritance maze to guess about
new and delete. Implicit deletes horrify me; I'd probably add
unnecessary
explicit delete's just to call attention!
I have tried to get into the C++ spirit. Once I read a magazine
article about
a general purpose delete routine. If an object contains a pointer to
another object do you delete that object also? To me, this is
obviously
a decision to be made by the programmer on the spot, but the writer
seemed to feel programmers should call his general-purpose routine
that made the decision with a crude heuristic! (IIRC, he deletes it
iff
it isn't null or a self-pointer.)
People that reject a language where they can't possibly know what
are they calling, aren't stupid. The contrary is true. They just
follow the KISS principle!
KEEP IT SIMPLE!
jacob
Glad to hear from someone who agrees with me!
James
.
- References:
- Simplicity has a future
- From: jacob navia
- Re: Simplicity has a future
- From: Tomás
- Re: Simplicity has a future
- From: jacob navia
- Simplicity has a future
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